At thirty, Jim Wiggins was just finishing college, still dating his high school sweetheart, and content with his life. That is, until the unexpected arrival of an old torn photograph and a French reporter's journal sends him off on a daunting adventure. Presented with a ticket to China along with the old journal and torn picture, he is reluctantly tasked with discovering the fate of his distant cousin, a Catholic priest. Father Kevin, a missionary in China, vanished fifty years earlier, shortly after the new communist government came to power. Once in China, filled with trepidation and tormented by visions of worst-case scenarios, Jim pursues his quest. He teams up with an American businessman, a seminarian, and the beautiful but mysterious Lui Ling. Moving between present day dangers and intrigues of the past, he translates the French journal in hopes of gaining clues to his cousin's fate. Jim struggles to find the resolve he needs but as the trail seems to go cold and they've appeared to have drawn unwanted attention he finds what he wasn't expecting-spiritual truth and direction in his life.
