Josh Phillips, a jaded travel writer for World Traveler magazine, lands in Uganda with a broken past and a mind already made up about Africa. A botched hotel booking and awkward cultural missteps only reinforce his worst assumptions.
Esther Kokongoro, an assistant professor of early African languages, is brilliant, compassionate, and disarmingly blunt. She keeps men at arm’s length and finds white men especially arrogant. Josh does nothing to alter her opinion—until he brings her an ancient mystery she can’t ignore.
When Josh buys a carved ebony elephant at a dusty market, the two discover an ancient scroll hidden inside and written in a language that Esther longs to decipher. Together they are swept into a dangerous search that takes them across Uganda and deep into the roots of African Christianity. They uncover a cache of ancient documents that may be tied to the Ethiopian eunuch mentioned in the book of Acts.
As they race to translate the texts, they find themselves entangled in mystery and confronted by a God who refuses to be a stranger. Amid mounting danger and a deepening spiritual awakening, can two people divided by race, culture, and fear discover healing—and a love neither of them expected?
