Written by a descendant of the Roma, the author discovers some of his forgotten ancestry, and why his own DNA stretches from England to the foothills of the Himalayas, in the journey of writing this tale of corruption and honor, cowardice and valor, enmity and friendship, horror and faith. The story starts hundreds of years ago in England's past by Roma fleeing constant persecution that had driven them from lands where they tried to make a home. They had arrived in England after a centuries-long journey that had started in India, led across Eastern Europe and through France. But they brought with them in their midst a bloodthirsty terror, a presence, however, that had given them protection in return for a place of sanctuary at its times of vulnerability. In a clash with a medieval lord and a monk the ancient threat was rendered dormant, but not dead. Leaping forward several hundred years, to the 1950's, to an England still struggling to recover from WWII, two descendants of those Roma sit in a classroom in an English high-school, knowing they are different, not knowing those differences would thrust them into a deadly fight with that dormant menace when it is awakened by a Professor of Archaeology who becomes infected by an primal virus and falls under its sway. Their quest takes them back into the Roma's origins, from the time they were forced to flee their ancestral lands of Northern India. The heroine of the story, who discovers the gifts and curses of her unique talents when a gypsy, or Roma, clan comes to town. Her awakening happens with the association of an old Roma Shuvano who recognizes her exceptionality. She experiences discrimination and exultation, doubts and triumphs as she transforms from an innocent teenager in a sleepy English country town into a powerful Roma Shuvani. She has to overcome her parents resistance to follow her quest and her passion, defies them to attempt to rescue her brother - whose own sacrifice saved her, rejection by her own chur