Nehemiah Freedman, illegitimate son of a Texas newspaper publisher, receives an inheritance enabling him to attend college. The day he goes to collect, his father's French widow -- Millicent— offers him a gift more valuable than cash... a mother's love and a birth certificate that doesn't read: 'Negro.'What could be this be worth to a young black man?  Would it allow him to remake who he is, or just how others perceive him? The year: 1913.  The last year in a century when the world wasn't 'technically' at war. But gathering storms loomed on a distant horizon.Against the backdrop of events leading to WWI, Nehemiah is compelled to accept the case of his young life: Finding the truth may be the only way his secret can be keep from the world— but the truth he uncovers could just as easily set the world on edge. There are many doors to truth, but only a single key.He is asked to locate the source of true love...not the untouchable, unknowable and esoteric, but something made of stone…tangible…something that can be held in the palm of a hand.From the engineer who stole a train to follow the woman he loved, to the conductor caught in his wife's descent into madness as she wove a tale naming the Archbishop of Canterbury as her father,  to a lonely Pastor who shaped the largest religious movement in the history of North America, but was now unrecognizable, alone and forgotten on the sun-soaked, bitter streets of Los Angeles.We know the people in this story. Their hurts lurch toward us like a chariot with no rider— their fragmented hopes become our rendition of 'Amazing Grace' and, their unending search for true love leads them to tragic choices where we all simply close our tearful eyes and repeat softly, "I understand…"