RIVER OF DUST

On the windswept plains of northwestern China in 1910, Mongol bandits swoop down upon an American missionary couple and steal their small child. The Reverend sets out in search of the boy and becomes entangled in the rugged, corrupt countryside of opium dens, sly nomadic warlords and traveling circuses.

This upright Midwestern minister develops a following among the Chinese peasants who christen him Ghost Man for what they perceive are his otherworldly powers. Grace, his young ingénue wife, pregnant with their second child, takes to her sick bed in the mission compound, where visions of her stolen child and lost husband beckon to her from across the plains. The foreign couple’s savvy Chinese servants, Ahcho and Mai Lin, eventually lead them on an odyssey back to one another and into a truer understanding of the world around them. In this story of retribution and the clash of cultures, the young couple finds their Christian beliefs sorely tested and their concept of fate expanded as their adopted country comes to haunt them, changing not only what they believe but who they are.