Excerpt from The Map of Salt and Stars by Zeyn Joukhadar, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Rawiya dreamed of seeing the world, but she and her mother could barely afford couscous, even with the money Rawiya's brother, Salim, brought home from his sea voyages. Rawiya tried to be content with her embroidery and her quiet life with her mother, but she was restless. She loved to ride up and down the hills and through the olive grove atop her beloved horse, Bauza, and dream of adventures. She wanted to go out and seek her fortune, to save her mother from a life of eating barley-flour porridge in their plaster house under the stony face of Jebel Musa, watching the shore for her brother's ship.

When she finally decided to leave home at sixteen, all Rawiya had to take with her was her sling. Her father had made it for her when she was a little girl throwing rocks at dragonflies, and she wouldn't leave it behind. She packed it in her leather bag and saddled Bauza by the fig tree next to her mother's house.

Now Rawiya was afraid to tell her mother how long she'd be gone, thinking she might try and stop her. "I'm only going to the market in Fes," Rawiya said, "to sell my embroidery."

But Rawiya's mother frowned and asked her to promise to be careful. The wind came strong off the strait that day, rattling through her mother's scarf and the hem of her skirt.

Rawiya had wrapped a red cloth around her face and neck, hiding her new-cut hair. She told her mother, "I won't stay longer than I have to." She didn't want her mother to know she was thinking of the story she'd heard many times—the story of the legendary mapmaker who came to the market in Fes once a year.

The wind opened and closed Rawiya's scarf like a lung. The painful thought struck her that she did not know how long she would be gone.

Mistaking her daughter's sadness for nerves, Rawiya's mother smiled. She produced a misbaha of wooden beads from her pocket and set it in Rawiya's hands. "My own mother gave me these prayer beads when I was a girl," she said. "God willing, they will comfort you while you are away."

Rawiya hugged her mother fiercely and told her she loved her, trying to commit her smell to memory. Then she climbed into Bauza's saddle, and he clicked his teeth against his bit.

Rawiya's mother smiled at the sea. She had once traveled to Fes, and she hadn't forgotten the journey. She said to her daughter, "Every place you go becomes a part of you."

"But none more so than home." Rawiya meant this more than anything else she'd said. And then Rawiya of Benzú nudged her horse until he turned toward the inland road, past the high peaks and fertile plains of the mountainous Rif where the Berbers lived, toward the Atlas Mountains and he teeming markets of Fes beckoning from the south.

The trade road wound through limestone hills and green plains of barley and almond trees. For ten days, Rawiya and Bauza picked their way along the winding road ground flat by travelers' shoes. Rawiya reminded herself of her plan: to find the legendary mapmaker, Abu Abd Allah Muhammad al-Idrisi. She planned to become his apprentice, pretending to be a merchant's son, and make her fortune. She would give a fake name—Rami, meaning "the one who throws the arrow." A good, strong name, she told herself.

Rawiya and Bauza crossed the green hills that separated the curved elbow of the Rif from the Atlas Mountains. They climbed high slopes topped by cedar forests and cork oak trees where monkeys rustled the branches. They curved down through valleys spread with yellow wildflowers.

The Atlas Mountains were the stronghold of the Almohads, a Berber dynasty seeking to conquer all of the Maghreb, the northern lands of Africa to the west of Egypt. Here, in their lands, every sound made Rawiya uneasy, even the snuffling of wild boar and the echoes of Bauza's hooves on the limestone cliffs. At night, she heard the distant sounds of instruments and singing and found it hard to sleep. She thought of the stories she had heard as a child—tales of a menacing bird big enough to carry off elephants, legends of deadly valleys filled with giant emerald-scaled snakes.

Excerpted from The Map of Salt and Stars by Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar. Copyright © 2018 by Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar. Excerpted by permission of Touchstone. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.