Tanya Novak will never forget the night, seven years ago, when she had to flee from the KGB, leaving her wounded father behind. She hasn't seen him since.

Nor does she understand the mystery that swirls around Feodor Kuzmich, the man in the coffin under the Russian monastery where her father was wounded. And what happened to the gold snuff box that the priest took from that coffin and gave to Yuri, Tanya's father?

Attorney Shannon Reed's life was fairly uncomplicated -- until she and Carolyn Dawson, the personal secretary of billionaire R. C. Cooper, purchased an old bloodstained Civil War Bible in Phoenix. On Carolyn's way home to England, her plane crashed in Colorado. Now the Bible, in its impact-proof case, is missing...and R.C. insists that Shannon be the one to follow the trail.

That trail will introduce Shannon -- and Tanya -- to a long list of odd characters, all of whom seem to want something very badly. Which ones can they trust -- and which not?

And what is the explanation for the bizarre gift that has set Tanya apart since her birth in Russia's far north?...

A suspenseful yet touching story of a Civil war Bible that pops up again and again over a century and shapes the very history of the nation.

This rich and involving historical and archeological thriller begins as a Union soldier, Tate, shoots a Confederate preacher known as the Bell Messenger and is bequeathed a worn Bible by the dying man. Tate's historical narrative parallels the contemporary story of John Brandon, who has just graduated college in 2000 and received the very same Bible, unearthed in a Saudi Arabian cave, as a gift.

The potent history of this book is revealed as Brandon searches for its previous owners, along the way uncovering the existence of a mysterious cache of gold hidden during Old Testament times -- which brings shadowy figures hot on Brandon's heels, hungry for the gold and desperate to learn the new clues he possesses.

As the past and present intertwine, the reader learns that this Bible has passed through many hands over the years. From the Civil War to the building of the Central Pacific Railroad, to the gang wars and the holding of Chinese slaves in nineteenth-century California, to the trenches of World War I, Brandon learns of the lives this Bible has saved, the deaths it has caused, and the history it has changed forever....