Sophia Chrysanthis is only sixteen when the German archaeologist Herr Obermann comes wooing: he wants a Greek bride who knows her Homer. Sophia passes his test, and soon she is helping to excavate the amphorae and bronze vessels at the battle site of Troy without damaging them. Obermann is very good at the art of archaeology—perhaps too good at it. The atmosphere at Troy is tense and mysterious. Sophia finds herself increasingly baffled by the past...not only the remote past that Obermann is so keen to share with her in the form of his beloved epics of the Trojan wars, but also his own, recent past—a past that he has chosen to hide from her. But she, too, is very good at the art of archaeology.