American geologist Ty Campbell spends his days on the periphery of the Sahara's internecine warfare in Mali, dowsing for water and trying to forget his murdered wife. When Lila, an aid worker on the verge of emotional collapse, leads a convoy of African refugees into the Mali badlands, Ty's hermitage is shattered. In a desperate attempt to save the refugees, Ty and Lila make a Faustian pact with Bud van Sickle--the smiling face of a powerful multinational corporation--who is competing for the lucrative privilege of ridding the planet of nuclear waste. His solution? Bury it beneath the land claimed by the refugees.

Ty finds himself pressed into service by Van Sickle and his company, Timbuktu Earthwealth, in order to save the refugees. As he is shuttled between commando training centers in Virginia, technocratic councils in Vienna, and the jungles of the Congo, the stakes escalate, and Lila and her refugees find themselves threatened by a growing civil war. Can Ty extricate himself from the center of ruinous conspiracy of personal and global proportions?

Desert Burial probes the human connections that mock our illusion of a world under our control--and reveals how those connections ultimately redeem us. Drawn from Brian Littlefair's real-world experience, the novel is a fast-paced thriller told with extraordinary depth and intricacy.