"I live in hell. Maybe it is the hell from your holy books."

You have never met a boy like Dawit. He is twelve years old, he lives in the hottest inhabited place on Earth, and he has just discovered that his father, the most trusted man in his community, is hiding something in the salt.

Fourteen slabs are missing. His father says breakage. Dawit knows better. He was taught to count everything. And now the counting is leading him somewhere that no twelve-year-old should go.

People are watching. People are lying. And a man who smiles with too many teeth has arrived in the settlement with gifts and questions and an accent that does not belong.

What would you do if the person you trusted most in the world turned out to be someone you did not recognize? And what would you do if finding the truth meant you might not survive it?

Turn the page. Enter the desert. START READING NOW.