11th-century Normandy. Crippled in his youth, a blasphemous monk comes face-to-face a relic the Bible says does not exist - and the Catholic Church never wants to be found.

11th-century Normandy. A recklessly rebellious peasant boy living on a towering sea- cliff, six-year-old Wido is a sinner by choice, and his arrogance is punished with a vengeance when the massive boulder he's standing on - known as God's Rock - breaks loose during a sudden storm and crashes into the sea below. Rescued from the rubble by the Viking Styrkar - the sole survivor of the same rock-fall that crushed his ship and crew - a crippled Wido hovers near death for weeks as his widowed young mother, Adelvia, in gratitude, shelters the badly wounded Norseman from a notorious relic-hunter desperate to possess an unfathomable treasure aboard his missing ship. Gold, silver, and jewels looted from lands the world over. And, unbeknownst to either man - softly glowing in a simple stone box stolen from a cave in the Holy Land - a relic the Bible says does not exist. And the Catholic Church never wants to be found.

Only, as the God-fearing Adelvia's increasingly immoral attraction to Styrkar leads to a betrayal of her sacred marriage vows to her long-dead husband, ravaged by guilt, she forces him from her shack and, unwittingly, into the jaws of the hunter's dogs. In nine- months-time, Adelvia's sinful act turns to something worse when a hate-filled and jealous Wido kills their bastard child at birth. Fearing the Devil is in his soul, a helpless Adelvia then delivers her blackhearted son into the hands of the Church and a life of forced service to the god who ruined him. God. Mother. The Church. Wido hates them all. The monastery is Purgatory. For years on end, suffering the hypocrisy and greed of a Church raised over the mysteriously missing bones of the greatest charlatan of them all, Wido lives only to even the score. 

So comes the day when the Hell-bound old monk gets his chance to exact his revenge: a stunning discovery made amidst the detritus of a world torn asunder by God Himself. A relic which - if revealed in its dark hiding place - might be wielded as a weapon to bring the Christian beast to its knees.

In an impossible twist, God's fate is in Wido's hands now.

An acclaimed cut-stone picture artist working under the name Grindstone Cowboy, first-time novelist Tim Urban gets the same satisfaction out of breathing life into stories that portray humanity at both its beautiful best and brutal worst as when he's crafting timeless, emotion-stirring images out of stone. After three decades spent in the artists' haven of Santa Fe, New Mexico, Tim and his wife, Cindy, now reside in Fernandina Beach, Florida where he strives to write thought-provoking books that make people reflect on themselves and their treatment of others.