Algeria, 1847. Alysson Vickery, wealthy, beautiful, and wildly rebellious, leaves France to join her fiancé, a French colonel, in war-torn Algiers. There she meets Nicholas Sterling, son of an English noblewoman and a Berber sheik. Known as Jafar el-Saleh, the notorious golden-haired Algerian rebel, he has sworn vengeance against the French colonel whom he holds responsible for his parents' deaths.