Dennis McLeary, sexually abused at age 6. At 18, he accepts sexual advances of a 14 year-old girl hoping to prove to himself that he is a normal man. Jailed for 17 years for having sex with the under-age girl, he is abused in prison by fellow inmates and the prison chaplain. Free at 35, he determines to better himself and hopes to have a normal marriage. Ensnared in a messy event, he escapes more prison time by becoming a waiter on a passenger-freighter. He gets leave from his ship to swim in Turkish waters, where he meets and falls in love with Myriam al-Montee, a half-Turkish half-Saudi Arabian Muslim woman. Instant adora-tion is reciprocated. Myriam elopes with Dennis, they are married by his ship's captain. Myriam does not tell Dennis that her fanatical father, who hopes to use her to found his dynasty, is known to behead any person showing fondness for her. When three women are beheaded at her father's orders, she warns Dennis, he could be next.
They hide from her father in Alexandria and in Cairo, but are located by her fa-ther's agents in Jerusalem. Kidnapped, Myriam is brought to her father in Saudi Arabia. He orders her locked in a cell-like room in a desert house where recently a cousin has starved to death. After three months, she get help and relieved by Alf, an Oil field worker. He tries to rape her. Dennis, agonizing for her, would travel any where including to a country where they would behead him in order to reach Myriam. They find each other near a famous oasis in time to stop Alf from raping Myriam. But fate holds more vicious challenges.