This story begins in 1974. Three-month-old Jessica Cullen is out at the shopping mall with her big brother, Doug, 3, and her mother. They are waiting in line for Doug to see Santa Claus. But when it was his turn, Doug got scared, wriggled his way out of Santa's grasp, hit the ground, and wet his pants. His mother rushed forward to help, and when she turned back toward Jessica's stroller, it was empty.
Fast forward to 2003. Callie Dunbrook is an archaeologist. She is recruited to work on a dig in rural Maryland, where a worker at a construction site had unearthed a 5000-year-old human skull. The site had been slated for development, and many people are not happy (possibly murderously unhappy) about being out of work so that an archaeological dig can take place there instead. Furthermore, Callie has to work the site with her ex-husband. But Callie is completely shaken to the core when a strange woman approaches her, saying she believes Callie to be her long-lost daughter.
Callie doesn't believe her, but cannot rest until she checks out the woman's story. It turns out that Callie, who studies the past, has quite a lot to learn about her own past. However, someone very dangerous does not want her to learn the truth.
This book has a lot of intrigue. There is the mystery of Callie's past and a woman's missing daughter. The book is also part murder mystery and part romance. The archaelogical dig itself is more backdrop than central to the story, though the discussions about uncovering an ancient civilization are very interesting. Callie's profession as an archaeologist is a sort of metaphor; she works as obsessively to uncover the past in her personal life as she does in her professional one. All in all, it's a very interesting read.
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