When Lucas catches a glimpse of a woman in a small Spanish town, his life is changed. She seems to him to be of unearthly beauty, for he sees her as someone from a distant past when we lived under a matriarchy and there was no violence on earth. He tells himself she could be an incarnation of the Goddess Diana. He must find her again.A man seen dining with her is the only link in Lucas's search. This man, who turns out to be a billionaire financier as well as a dangerous enemy of the woman, is occupied with buying all the art in the world, perhaps to protect it from a future war, or because he feels it is wasted on a common public. Lucas trails him throughout Europe and the States, engaged in a duel of wits, which seems lost when the financier's organization has Lucas condemned to death for murder. It is on death row in a Pennsylvania prison that Lucas meets the woman he has been searching for so desperately.Here is an intricate puzzle about a man who has a vision about a woman whose beauty is to be measured not by the standards of man, but "by those of rivers, rain, nature", about undoing the wrongs of history. The novel, Hans Koning's first in eight years, has elements of myth and mysticism, and the same "intense passion" -- the Atlantic Monthly, "humor" -- the New Yorker, "intelligence" -- Newsweek, and "artistic elegance" -- the New York Times that has characterized his previous works.