Is there more than one history of the world? In the 1970s, historian Pierce Moffett, newly jilted and jobless, gets off a bus in the Faraway Hills and steps unawares into a story that has been awaiting him there. He has moved to the New England countryside to write a book, driven by an idea he dare not believe—that the physical laws of the universe once changed, and may change again; that before science defined the modern age, other powers, wondrous and magical, governed the universe, their lore perfected within a lost capital of hieroglyphs, wizard-kings, and fabulous monuments. Not in Egypt—but Aegypt. The notion is not his alone. Something waits at the locked estate of historical romance author Fellowes Kraft, something for which Pierce and those near him have long sought without knowing it—a key, perhaps, to Aegypt. His search will bring him into contact with Rosie Rasmussen, another seeker marked by loss, and it will lead them both on a path toward the longed-for country of our oldest dreams and most unanswerable desires, toward a magnificent discovery.