Gunther Temple is fretting about the empty library at the Texas Museum of Natural History, fearing that his job as librarian is doomed; he's fretting about the Austin August heat; and as always there's the overlay of being a single thirty-eight year old. When Piper Curry, who happens to need a librarian and also fits Temple's fantasy by being an attractive middle-aged woman, walks in, his life changes. Through helping her locate a diary by Philo Hartwig, a powerful evangelist who crusades for creationism, Gunther Temple embarks on a journey through library stacks, the evangelist's headquarters in Arkansas, and an up-and-down romance. The action culminates with the exposure of Hartwig's plan to use his scientific background as a prominent biologist to use brain manipulation and gene therapy to create a legion of followers.