The sudden death of Professor Wells' wife Carlotta, drove him in despair from the halls of ivy where he was a professor of archaeology, back out into the field, to Mexico. What brought him to Mexico City was his wife's ancestry. Although a second generation American herself, her forebearers could be traced back to the Aztecs and so on the ground of her ancestors, he tried to bury his grief in an intimate and deep study of the Aztecs, a contact that surprisingly led him far afield and his daughter, Maria, into incredible and terrifying danger.