Like the character of Kyle Tombs, who is introduced near the end of this story, Kevin Shell too is a missionary's son. He spent most of the first nineteen years of his life overseas, in many foreign lands, and learned the folk lore of a dozen nations as a result. " Entranced, I listened to the tales that my Filipina baby sitter told me as a young child. In a fascination that was beyond my understanding, I read the mural stories chiseled into the stone walls of Angkor Wat in Cambodia, left there by the hands of priests that had been dust for a thousand years. I have placed my hands on the gothi...