Rising out of the sea on a rocky isle off the coast of France, the church and abbey of Mont-Saint-Michel have withstood the harsh northern weather - and withheld its darkest medieval mysteries
- for one thousand years. Until now.
Now a young, brilliant archeologist, Johanna, responding to the cryptic utterance of a headless monk that has haunted her dreams since childhood - "To enter heaven one must dig into the earth"
- has begun to uncover and explore secrets that have long lain buried at the sacred site. For not even ten centuries have been able to obliterate completely the brutal treachery of the
Benedictine monk Brother Almodius or the misfortunes of the tender-hearted Brother Roman in his forbidden love for a Celtic girl, Moira, who experienced ritualistic torture by the elements of
earth, air, fire, and water.
In ancient ritual, in foreboding visions, in an expedition at once metaphysical and archeological, Johanna ardently researches the past only to discover that its bizarre, murderous history has
begun to be repeated in the present. Reality becomes an elusive, dangerous place, and it leaves Johanna with no one she can fully trust: from her married lover, Francois, who is also the
Minister of Cultural Monuments; to Simon, the cosmopolitan antique dealer whose family is strangely connected to the abbey; to Guillaume, whose passion for Johanna's work comes not unalloyed;
to the jealous archeologist - and devious saboteur - Patrick Fenoy.
Her science increasingly challenged by inexplicable mysteries, in the embrace of peril Johanna treads the ancient stones and arcana in the depths of the Romanesque abbey at Mont-Saint-Michel as
this thriller unfolds.
