Katie Reynolds, a young veterinary doctor from California, is sent overseas to war-torn Kurdistan to find a disease spreading from animals to people. Unexpectedly caught in a firestorm, she is cast into the ancient Middle East, where she has only her intelligence to keep her alive in the extraordinary and archaic time of 1320 BC, the age of the Egyptian Pharaohs.

Following a lengthy convalescence in a primitive and foreign place, it takes her a while to realize she has been cast into a very ancient time. Not even the stars are familiar, the star clusters she expects; the ones she grew up with wouldn’t be in their usual heavenly positions for another 4,000 years.

Luckily Katie finds two things to help her maintain a grip on her sanity; these ancients thought she was a goddess come to earth and treated her accordingly. And the second was not as important as status, but she was thrilled to realize René, her 20th-century accomplice tripped through the same time portal she did during the firestorm.

René was discovered differently, not regarded by the Yezidi people as anything more than ordinary; he was more like them in skin color and was not seen preferentially like they saw Katie. Plus; he was a male; he didn’t fulfill their prophecies as she did.