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When Alice Mannegan receives a phone call from an American archeologist seeking a translator, what begins as a trek into the remote deserts of northwest China in search of archeological treasure turns into a journey of the heart. Suspecting that famed archeologist and Jesuit priest/theologian Teilhard de Chardin may have hidden the bones of Peking Man in China's far northwest during the Second World War, Alice and her companions search for the bones by following clues left in his letters, in the process unraveling the story of his conflicted 23-year relationship with an American divorcee, Lucile Swan. As the China around them struggles to reconcile its own past and present, Alice must come to terms both with her racist father back home and with the slow, surprising love now growing between her and Chinese scientist Lin Shiyang.