Robyn Davidson, a young woman who had "never changed a light-bulb, sewn a dress, mended a sock, changed a tyre, or used a screwdriver", took a train to Alice Springs in central Australia with six dollars in her pocket and a wildly unrealistic ambition: to capture wild camels, train them, and then cross the great desert of Western Australia with them.

Her journey is an exploit in the extravagant tradition of the great Victorian explorers, but Robyn Davidson is not only an explorer, but also a young woman who wishes to get past the negativity and alienation of modern, urban existence and seek fulfillment in close harmony with the natural world.

Testing her physical and emotional resources to the limit, Davidson crosses half of Australia on foot, in the process coming to know the desert, the rhythms of traditional Aboriginal society, and herself. Robyn Davidson seeks transformation, epiphany, and freedom, and eventually she finds these things.

Her story turns out to be not of a hand-to-hand battle with the forces of nature but of a passionate love affair with them.