Chapel Hill, North Carolina: Ian van Leeuvan, a professor of American history, finds a newspaper clipping dated 1944. The woman in the picture could be his mother's twin, but his mother, Margaret, was born in 1939. He finds his grandmother's prayer book in a long-forgotten box. Throughout the prayer book there are cryptic clues alluding to an important item hidden in the family home in Potsdam, Germany. What is the hidden treasure? Could it be a journal explaining why his grandmother abandoned his mother in 1944? Ian decides for his mother's sake and his own peace of mind, he must travel to Germany and recover what was hidden.
As he searches the attic of his grandmother's old home in Potsdam, there are others also looking for the treasure, an ancient artifact Elsbet von Rippenhof stole from them in 1944. These devotees of the religion of the ancient Norse gods must obtain the lost artifact, Thor's Medallion, to continue their task of rebuilding the old religion. And they will stop at nothing, including kidnap and murder, to get it back.