In 1897 in the mountain wilderness of the Hindu Kush, a seventeen year-old English girl is brought to Shul to be sold as a slave. She is a prisoner for two long years before escape. Lalla, as she is called, believes herself to be Jemimah Lawley, heiress to the great house and estates of Witchwood in Surrey.
She escapes across Afghanistan with a man who hates her, and hears for the first time a name that will later echo menacingly in her life... the name Stormswift. Once home, she faces the shock of being compelled to doubt her own identity. Is she truly Jemimah Lawley, or is she suffering from a delusion caused by her degrading ordeal as Lalla of Shul?
Life in England brings her a touching friendship, but also the heartbreak of love without hope. Lalla of Shul has to return to the land of her captivity to find the happiness she believed could never be hers.
