Marguerite's light-hearted and guileless observations of the people she comes to love are as heart-warming as they are valuable, charting Bedouin traditions now lost to the modern world.

Married to a Bedouin is the story of how Marguerite van Geldermalsen fell in love with Mohammad Manaja and married him; how she settled into his cave, and slept with him on the ledge in front under a sheet of stars; how she fetched water by donkey, baked bread daily and ran the local clinic.

 The book describes the most recent history of Petra. Through her stories and the stories of the people she shared the valley with, comes a picture of the site when it was alive, and when Marguerite was married to a Bedouin.