A handyman stumbles on a piece of junk in the yard of a Washington, D.C. homeless shelter and, finding it interesting, turns it over to a priest who manages the agency. Later the priest, not interested at first, does a quick Internet search and is stunned. Could this discard -- a royal mace or short staff, maybe a museum shop replica -- be related to a controversial archeological find unearthed in Syria, a relic that mysteriously attracts thousands of pilgrims seeking miraculous cures?
A few weeks earlier, a group of young D.C. professionals meet in Virginia hunt country to celebrate a birthday. It is a typical champagne-drenched get together until a late night incident spoils the party. On a moonlit walk near Culpepper, VA they have a murky sighting of men on horses, thousands of them in the distance, parading in massive clouds of dust and martial music. The experience is too earthy and massive to dismiss, but they can't agree on what they have just seen. Frightened, and realizing the experience cannot be explained, they agree to forget it.
But it is not so easy to ignore or escape a hidden world that is closing in on the principal character, Rick Reynolds, and his friends, and in the days ahead, that world, the ancient mace and the soldiers participating in America's most epic historical battle will come together on a hill, a passage, near Gettysburg, Pennsylvia.
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