When her mother has the chance to establish an eye clinic for the poor in Cairo, Egypt, seventeen-year-old Caroline reluctantly gives up her plans for a summer spent with her best friend and boyfriend and instead moves to Cairo, where she encounters a culture and city that enchant her and a charming boy who challenges her thoughts on love, faith, and privilege.

When fourteen-year-old Talibah and her ten-year-old brother, Adom, visit modern-day Egypt with their historian-father, they become involved in a mystery surrounding Hatshepsut, a woman pharoah, and Senenmut, architect of her mortuary tomb, as well as their own deceased mother.