Trapped in a world of anger, 29 year old Bryan Whittaker cannot move on with his life until he takes a journey into his past ... a dangerous journey that will lead him into the heart of the Amazon Rain Forest. Instead of the revenge he seeks, Bryan finds redemption and in the process makes peace with his past. The last time Bryan Whittaker saw his father--a pioneer missionary in the Amazon Rain Forest--he was a seven-year-old boy. Having just received reports that a plague was decimating members of a remote tribe. Harold Whittaker hastens to respond. Ever ready to spread the Gospel and bring comfort, he quickly packs a supply of pencillin and other medical supplies, prays with his family and sets out. He was never seen nor heard of again. Leaving a devastated family behind. Bryan's mother is slow to heal and unable to reach out to him in the midst of her own grif, never remarried but along with her daughter, Helen, was finally able to discover a measure of peace and rebuild her life. Always introspective--and a bit difficult even as a child--Bryan remains trapped in grief now turned into anger. Recently divorced, his mother newly buried, and estranged from his sister, Bryan is at a crossroads in his life. Bitter, resentful, unable to hold a job--and most of all unable to love or be loved--he takes his share of the small inheritance from his mother's paltry estate and heads for the Amazon--the same river and path his father took twenty years earlier--to find what happened to him--and maybe find himself in the process. The only clue he has that will help him know if he's reached his destination is the memory of his father's most treasured earthly possession--a beautiful alabaster cross.