A Couple Grows a Map... With the encouragement of his longtime girlfriend, a young bank teller from northern Virginia decides to try a new look: a beard that comes in especially thick, unnaturally fast, and unusually colorful. The couple soon realizes that the combination of colors, streaks, and patches all roughly correspond with parts of a local street grid, and on impulse they follow a blond thread to its real-world equivalent. What they find is a mystery leading to another mystery, and a map that leads to more maps. David Clifford's epic narrative spans centuries, ranges for thousands of miles, and straddles genres from historical fiction to psychological suspense. In a unique blend of plain dialogue and rich description, THE BEARD is a story of appearance becoming identity, of a search for direction becoming a destination, and of the horror of finding what you look for.