The Sands of Time

The Sands of Time
Author
Sidney Sheldon
Country
United States
Language
English
Genre(s)
adventure romance
Publisher
William Morrow
Publication date
1988
Media type
print (hardback)
Pages
412
ISBN
978-0446356831
Preceded by
Windmills of the Gods
Followed by
Memories of Midnight
The Sands of Time is a 1988 action novel by author Sidney Sheldon. A best-seller, the novel follows the adventures of four women who are forced to leave their Spanish convent for the outside world of threat, violence and passions; and two men who are pitted against each other in a fight to the death.

Plot summary
The Sands of Time is set in post-revolutionary Spain with links to New York. The characters are Basque freedom fighters on the run, the police who pursue them, escaping nuns who suffer arrest, rape, or death in a conflicted world, and wealthy New Yorkers searching for their lost child heiress.
Against the backdrop of armed struggle between Basque nationalists and a repressive Spanish government in the post-Franco years, the charismatic Basque guerrilla leader Jaime Mir and the corrupt, sadistic Colonel Acoca.
Several storylines converge as the nuns are attacked for supposedly hiding a terrorist leader when in fact one of their own is a murderer on the run. While fleeing to a safe convent they meet the guerilla fighter and his friends, fall in love, decide to return to the convent or not, and as strangers to each other, eventually find out who they really are.
Plot
The story begins in Pamplona, Spain in 1976. The Basque people are fighting against Spain for their rights to free speech and cultural independence. While people are distracted with bulls let loose in the town during a fight, the famous Jaime Mir (a member of the Basque terrorist group ETA) sneaks into the Pamplona prison disguised as a priest and escapes with two of his fellow terrorists, Ricardo Mellado and Felix Carpio.
The Prime Minister assigns Colonel Ram Acoca (head of the anti-ETA group GOE) to find and kill Jaime Mir. Acoca has his own reasons for killing the terrorists; he vowed revenge after his wife and unborn child were killed in a Basque demonstration years before.
The Cistercian Convent of the Strict Observance had been running just outside of a town called ila since 1601, one of seven left in Spain after the Civil War had destroyed hundreds of them. The nuns know nothing of the outside world; in their discipline they eat little, pray at least eight times a day, flagellate (whip) themselves at least once a week, and carry out their assigned tasks. Their only valuable asset is a donated solid gold cross, hidden away so that the nuns only know poverty. The nuns have no eye contact nor speech, only using an ancient, secret sign language to communicate with each other. The convent is run by the Reverend Mother Betina.
A new nun, Sister Lucia, is only at the convent to hide from the police. As Lucia Carmine the daughter of a Mafia boss in Italy, lost everything when her father business crumbled. Lucia attempts to flee the country, deciding to go to Switzerland, where a hidden bank account contains millions of dollars promised to her by her father. However, while going through Spain, she decides to hide out at the convent so the police won find her.
Meanwhile, Colonel Accoa believing the nuns are hiding Jaime Mir, has his men raid the convent, arresting and raping the nuns. Before she is arrested, the Reverend Mother Betina gives the gold cross to Sister Teresa, who is one of four nuns (including Sisters Lucia, Megan, and Graciela). Lucia leads the nuns through the countryside to a safe convent, planning to steal the gold cross, pawn it, and get money and a fake passport to go to Switzerland and get her money.
Colonel Acoca is furious; he has figured out that four of the nuns are missing and is convinced that Jaime Mir escaped before the soldiers got there. The Prime Minister doubts that he was there in the first place and believes that Acoca is starting to get out of control, but continues to have the Colonel search for both Mir and the missing nuns.
The four nuns meet up with a man who calls himself Friar Carrillo, who brings them to a store so they can change. He takes Graciela away from the other nuns for a minute and begins to rape her, but the other nuns intervene, tying up Carrillo, who was a wanted murderer posing as a Friar to steal from the monasteries in his travels. The nuns leave Carrillo in the store and continue traveling.
In the forest they run into Jaime Mir hiding with his men, Ricardo and Felix from the prison, Jaime girlfriend Amparo, and Rubio Arzano, another man, and...(and so on) To get More information , you can visit some products about wholesale designer sunglasses, dolphin earrings, . The Salwar Kameez products should be show more here! 

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