The ivory trade, smallpox, rock-’n’-roll, and one woman’s past converge in this gripping, psychological page-turner.

In 1975 black market ivory prices are on the rise, Bob Dylan has just released Blood on the Tracks, and nine-year-old Elena Monroe witnesses a brutal murder in a Kenyan river valley. Sixteen years later, Elena must journey from Albuquerque to Africa before her increasingly volatile memories unravel the ties to her mother and cause her to lose the man she loves. In a world of ivory poaching and all-night parties, where Donna Summer’s Love to Love You Baby and the Rolling Stones play until dawn, Elena discovers corruption in the people she loves, and allows her own identity to be altered for survival. Amid a landscape of loss and destruction, Desire is a graphic, historically relevant, and honest exploration of courage, love, and resilience.