In the autumn of 1921, a frightened widow brings the Emersons a small golden statue of Tutankhamun and claims that its curse killed her husband. She asks them to return it to the tomb from which it was stolen, although the location of that tomb—and the route by which the object reached her family—are unknown.
The investigation leads to papyrus fragments, tomb robbers and violent efforts to recover the statue. Amelia rejects the supernatural explanation but cannot ignore the pattern of deaths and attacks surrounding the object, and the family’s search for its provenance moves them closer to the still-undiscovered royal burial that will soon transform Egyptology.