North-West India, 1897. Simon and Alice Fonthill travel with Jenkins to an anniversary gathering of the Guides, only to find the frontier sliding into revolt. After an ambush, Viceroy Lord Elgin gives Simon a sensitive mission to carry a message to the Amir of Afghanistan. While Simon is away, attacks spread through the passes and Alice is captured by the religious leader driving part of the uprising, turning a political assignment into a desperate rescue across hostile mountain country.
The novel draws on the great frontier rising of 1897 and the campaigns that culminated in the Tirah Expedition against Afridi and Orakzai resistance. Victor Bruce, 9th Earl of Elgin, was Viceroy during the crisis, when attacks on posts and the seizure of the Khyber Pass forced a major British Indian response. Wilcox uses the North-West Frontier as both military setting and political borderland, where British authority depended on tribal alliances, intelligence and precarious communications with Kabul.
