Acclaimed novelist Barbara Wood combines her superb storytelling gifts with medical and historical fact to create the epic adventure of an unusual and gifted young woman seeking her destiny in the ancient healing arts. Born into the tumultuous world of ancient Antioch, Selene is orphaned at birth. But before her father dies, he leaves a puzzling clue to her heritage: she has come from the gods and has a special destiny to fulfill. In the coming years, Selene studies the primitive healing arts with Mera, the healer-woman who adopts her. She learns how to lower fevers by brewing Hecate's Cure from the willow tree, how to apply green mold to an open wound to prevent infection, and most important, how to calm a patient by summoning the inner power of the "soul flame." But on her sixteenth birthday, Selene falls in love with Andreas, a passionate and troubled surgeon. When fate cruelly separates them, Selene's search for Andreas takes her to the great centers of civilization in the ancient world-Egypt, Babylon, and Rome. Desperate to find Andreas, Selene is torn between love and her dreams of healing when a revolutionary vision brings her to the fulfillment of her destiny-and the dawn of modern medicine.