American journalist Mary travels to Algeria to investigate the brutal death of her college roommate, also a journalist and colleague. Once there, she builds a family around her in a country unwelcoming of reporters to the point of criminal violence. When her plane explodes after leaving Algeria, it perhaps shouldn't come as a surprise. The death of her twin sister throws Janet's life in the United States into upheaval as she prepares her own trip to Algeria to find answers. She's met with suspicion but soon finds a small group of global journalists who are willing to help her find the truth about Mary. To complicate things, it would seem Mary was involved, perhaps romantically, with a group member named Michel. Together, they risk life and freedom to report on conditions in a country that, in the late twentieth century, many considered the most repressive and ruthlessly corrupt police state in the world--one that seemed to do everything imaginable to silence the voices of those who tried to expose the terror. What began as Janet's search for closure becomes a much bigger adventure as she joins the ranks of Algerian journalists as a screaming voice in the foreign wilderness.