Moving to Littleton, CO 47-year old Caelum Quirk and his younger wife, Maureen, gets jobs at Columbine High School. In April, 1999, while Caelum is away for a family emergency Maureen cowers in a cabinet in Columbine's library, hiding from two students, Maureen cannot recover from the trauma. Seeking solace, the couple returns to Connecticut, to an illusion of safety on the Quirk family family's farm.

While Maureen fights to regain her sanity, Caelum discovers a cache of forgotten memorabilia spanning five generations of his family, from the Civil War to his own troubled childhood. As he painstakingly reconstructs the lives of his ancestors- and uncovers their unimaginable secrets- Caelum must confront his family's past and fashion a future from the ashes of his own tragedy. His personal quest for meaning and faith becomes a mythic journey that is both quintessentially contemporary and American.