France. 1284. The cathedral of St Pierre climbs higher and higher over the town of Beauvais. In the heat of an August night, Christina beekeeper, sister of Marguerite, daughter of the heretic and sculptor Giles of Beauvais struggles to keep a secret. The year is also 2001. We're in Chicago, city of towers and home to Fermilab, the world-renowned physics lab. Here Christina Carver, daughter of rebel physicist, Dr Giles Carver, also keeps a secret even from her sister Maggie. When a bell rings for matins when a telephone rings in the middle of the night Christina will fail to wake and all six lives will change forever. In the days that follow, each will be forced to confront what is real and what is not in a world that is precarious, relative and unrelentingly mysterious. This is a story that unfolds across two far-flung centuries and across two worlds. In each, the lives of a father and his two daughters are about to be catapulted into crisis ...