For Alice Mannegan, an American by birth, a translator by profession, it all begins with a phone call seeking her services as an interpreter. It ends in an intoxicating journey of the heart - one that plunges Alice into China's past and some of its most rarely glimpsed regions.
Hired by an archaeologist searching for the bones of Peking Man, Alice joins an expedition that penetrates a vast, unchartered land and brings professor Lin Shiyang into her life.
What happens between Alice and Lin becomes one of the most breathtakingly erotic love stories in recent fiction.
