The Shifting Sands is set in Algiers, written in 1975, after the Algerian war for independence; hero Andre and other characters are French, and heroine Ruth and the other man Paul Brent are English. I continue to enjoy this book, even on a third read, partly for the great setting and partly for Kay Thorpe’s writing, but mostly for the convincing emotional development.

New to Algiers, young Ruth convinces Andre to take her along on his flight to a distant, tiny desert village where her father lives, but they crash in the Sahara miles off course and with insufficient supplies to allow them to walk the 60 miles to the village. This part of the novel is riveting as they must head to a tiny, almost dried up oasis to replenish their water before hiking further. Andre knows how to keep them alive through sandstorms, desiccating heat and bitter nighttime cold. Eventually they reach the village mission, but Ruth’s father is dead and she is very ill with a fever. Andre tells her Ruth father is dead and they will marry; she’s too ill and desolate to refuse.

The reason I like The Shifting Sands is that Ruth’s feelings follow a trajectory that make perfect sense. When Ruth first meets Andre she is overwhelmed and and she feels inadequate and gauche. After the crash she’s still overwhelmed – he saved their lives – and ready to fall in love, but he’s a bit aloof and she’s still terribly unsure of herself, especially compared to beautiful Simone.

Ruth hears some obvious gossip that exacerbates her lack of confidence to believe that Andre is really not interested in her. Andre gets bossy and possessive and forbids her to talk with a young Englishman Simone brings to a party, annoying Ruth who gets her back up and pushes Andre away. Simone makes a lot of trouble between Andre and Ruth, but goes so far that Ruth must confront her own growing feeling for Andre.

Kay Thorpe writes The Shifting Sands from Ruth’s point of view, making it hard to see exactly what Andre thinks. He’s extraordinarily possessive and jealous, angry at Ruth for talking to Paul or dancing with him – despite his own dances with Simone – yet he talks down to her, calls her child, tells her he wants a wife and not a ward but he doesn’t share much about his business or personal life with her. When he proposed he told her he would wait for her, they could live as brother and sister for a while. However he gets impatient quickly.

Andre takes her for a drive along the coast one day, which Ruth enjoys and begins to feel loving towards him, but then ruins it by taking her to the casino, then to dinner where Simone poisons first Ruth and then Andre with her lies. Andre tops the evening off by telling her to go ahead and despise him, before coming “purposely towards her” in her bedroom so that they have no grounds for annulment.

Nonetheless we can infer something about his feelings. Either he’s uncommonly possessive and untrusting or he’s hurt by Ruth continually backing off from him. One evening just a couple days after they returned to Algiers from the desert he comes to her room and puts his hands on her shoulders, tells her how lovely she is, little gestures like that that could mean he feels something for Ruth beyond duty. Yet it’s so easy for Simone to twist how Ruth sees Andre’s behavior; she tells Ruth Andre married her only for duty, that Ruth should do the right thing, leave Andre to set him free since his sense of honor will not allow him to initiate a separation.

Had Ruth been less unsure of herself or Simone less believable Ruth could have dispelled the nastiness. Simone started her little taunt by claiming that Ruth obviously had set out to entrap Andre, which Ruth most certainly had not done, and had Ruth talked to Andre about this, or been able to consider it dispassionately she could have realized that if Simone was so wrong about Ruth she may have been wrong about Andre as well. Andre too is caught in Simone’s net of cruel lies and doesn’t take time to talk to Ruth before deciding he needs to consummate their marriage to make an annulment impossible.

Eventually Ruth and Andre manage to realize how Simone has twisted and manipulated events, that they truly do care about each other, and they have the requisite happy ending.

Kay Thorpe writes well – as you can imagine when you realize she took a basic romance plot, a short 154 page novel, and made it into a compelling, enjoyable story about two people who find each other. The desert of the Sahara is a metaphor for the arid waste both Ruth and Andre have in their hearts before they come together. They escape the Sahara by dint of Andre’s leadership and Ruth’s determined slog and they conquer their heartaches by trusting each other enough to tell the truth in a moment.

It’s also a tribute to her skill that the short scene where Andre comes “purposely towards her” has more emotional punch than a lot of authors manage to get with paragraphs of lurid encounter. That simple phrase makes us think about what must come next.

4 Stars

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Amazon has several copies of the paperback edition in stock but unfortunately this is not available on Kindle or via Harlequin on Glose. I got my copy of The Shifting Sands from Thriftbooks and you can read a pdf version from Archive.org or check eBay for paperbacks.