Shattered by the death of his wife Amanda, antiquarian bookseller Peter Byerly is drifting through life aimlessly when he stumbles on the Victorian miniature that so forcefully reminds him of her. Peter becomes obsessed with learning the picture's origins. But as he follows the trail back, first to the Victorian era and then to Shakespeare's time, he learns much more than that. The truth about his own past, for example; and even possibly the key to the mystery of who really did write Shakespeare's plays.