Publisher's Synopsis
IN A WORLD STEEPED IN MYTHOLOGY AND FEAR, children still disappear in the middle of the night. Rafiq's ancestors have stolen thousands of children and carried them across the border to safety in the mysterious Eastern Desert, never to be heard from again. It's what the Thieves do, and all de Haias are Thieves. Except Rafiq. Despite growing up in the ancestral home and on the dusty desert border, the youngest de Haia isn't being trained as a Thief. He's fallen through the cracks and been left to decide his own fate (or so he assumes).But when an unexpected turn of events brings word to one mother that her daughter is still alive (and she demands her immediate return), Rafiq finds himself in the great city of Vesna. Unsure of his place in the family and of his future, what he uncovers in Vesna isn't about the stolen girl at all, but about his sister, whose death definitely wasn't an accident.Woven through this coming-of-age tale are glimpses at the life of the girl whose existence caused all the trouble (or some of it), legends of the mysterious Eastern Desert, and hints of a much larger story that is just beginning.
