Ned Marriner is spending six weeks with his father in France, where the celebrated photographer is shooting Saint-Sauveur Cathedral in Aix-en-Provence. Both father and son fear for Ned's mother - a physician with Doctors Without Borders, currently assigned to the civil war-torn country of Sudan. This is not the first time she's placed herself in harm's way to help alleviate suffering - and Ned has inherited her courage. He'll need it.While exploring the cathedral, Ned meets Kate Wenger, an American exchange student with a deep knowledge of the area's history. But even Kate is at a loss when she and Ned surprise a scar-faced stranger, wearing a leather jacket and carrying a knife, deep inside the cathedral. "I think you ought to go now," he tells them. "You have blundered into a corner of a very old story..."In this ancient place, where the borders between the living and the long-dead are thin, Ned and his family are about to be drawn into a haunted tale, as mythic figures from conflicts of long ago erupt into the present, changing - and claiming - lives. Read Less