Lucia has just finished her degree when she travels to Palestina to cooperate with a NGO. She is full of hopes and goodwill but what she finds there will break all her preconceived ideas. In the refugee camps, there are not only altruistic goals but a constant fight for power. The Arabs are confronted between themselves, different political and religious factions clash with each other while all of them are in war against Israel and, in some cases, against Western civilisation. Trapped in this overwhelming chaos, Lucía will meet the Hawk, an English-Palestinian man, educated in the best schools, with a captivating magnetism. They will start a dangerous relationship full of passion and pain and Lucia’s life will never be the same.
Sand Promises is a romantic thriller with a background as current as the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Laura Garzón takes us into a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip to make us understand that, where tragedy is chewed daily, love can also arise.
It tells the story of Lucía Álvarez de Castro, a social worker from Madrid who, tired of the frivolity of Spanish society in 2005, joins a group of five volunteers to work for six months in the Palestinian refugee camp of Rafah, in the middle of the Gaza Strip. All the members of that expedition are idealistic young people who want to do something useful with their lives, but they will soon discover that the harsh reality of the occupied territories far exceeds what they had imagined and that, in reality, they are only naive people who, for the first time in their lives, they will know pain closely. Lucia will discover that in the Gaza Strip there is no room for indecision and she will slowly abandon the girl who is still in her to become a strong woman.
But Lucia will not only grow as a human being, but she will also grow as a woman. Because in that camp she will meet Hayzam Kenway, who everyone calls Hawk, a mysterious man who only moves for his own interests and who, if he now helps the refugees, tomorrow will inform the Israelis about the best places to bomb. Despite the amorality of this kind of mercenary / spy, Lucia will fall madly in love with him and will surrender to love with his eyes closed.
Everything will get more complicated when Lucia discovers that Hayzam, a man capable of carrying out the kindest actions seconds before performing the most unworthy things, is actually married to the bedouin nurse Fathia, pregnant with him, and that his lack of scruples reaches the point of being able to give the coordinates of a hospital full of civilians for the Israeli army to bombard. Six years later, when she has remade her life with a doctor (Jason) and when Hayzam's son has grown up, the Falcon will reappear to take her with him.
With all these elements, Laura Garzón composes a romantic thriller with a political background that will make the most sensitive hearts fall in love and that will fascinate those readers who look for a book loaded with present. In short, an opera prima that announces the arrival of an author with an interesting narrative capacity.
