When clearing out the family home after her mother's death, Bikita comes upon a shard of pottery. It takes her back to her childhood in Georgia, where, as child she found it in the garden. She studies it, and is fascinated by the distinctive series of parallel lines that make up the design. Surprised that her mother has kept it all these years, Bikita wants to understand where it came from and how it got into the garden. On her quest to uncover the story of the shard, she exposes a tale of love, greed and cruelty that leads back to nineteenth-centry West Africa. The unravelling of the mystery of the shard is a page-turner right to the end as the writer takes us on a journey which crosses continents and travels back through the centuries to a story lost in time.