A modern-day Romeo and Juliet—set against the backdrop of deadly weapons smuggling in the Middle East When ten-year-old Elizabeth West's father dies in a tragic plane crash over the Persian Gulf, her family uproots their life in Washington, D.C. and moves to London. Her mother marries a British business man who has been knighted and has two children, and Elizabeth (Lizzy), her mother, and her two sisters move in with their new family. At age sixteen, while attending the American School of London, Lizzy meets and falls in love with Adil Hasan—but when Adil's father, a noted arms middleman, is deported, Lizzy and Adil separate. Lizzy's family has also become involved with French-German industrialist Gerald Rene Wagner; little does she know, Adil's family has ties to the man, as well. When a member of Lizzy's family is murdered in Berlin under mysterious circumstances, questions surface about Wagner's dealings, and Lizzy reexamines what really may have happened to her father. All the while, she endeavors to reunite with her lost love, Adil, and reclaim their connection that was ripped away. Set in the years before and after the first Gulf War, Burning Distance is a journey through family secrets and competing loyalties, contemporary history, and the dark world of arms trafficking. Jane Austen meets John le Carr in this cross-cultural love story and political thriller