In 1938, while working an excavation at Moundville Archaeological Park, Civilian Conservation Corp cadet John Patton Jr. found the key to our darkest secret - an anomalous skeleton neither animal nor man. Uncertain of its implications, Patton concealed the secret for decades - until revealing it to the world in a sensational tell-all novel that made him notorious across the globe. Claiming the skeleton was proof of not only the existence of extraterrestrials, but also of their involvement in the genesis of the human race, the novel would ultimately destroy his accomplished anthropology career-and leave him shunned at home. Nearly thirty years later, his grandson Gardner, an anthropology student at the University of Alabama, is forced to come to terms with his grandfather's past, a man he never knew but in whose footsteps he inevitably follows.