In 1587, Sir Walter Raleigh sent 116 men, women and children to Roanoke Island on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. They were to plant the first English colony in the New World. By 1590, they had disappeared. The colony was lost, and it remains America's oldest unsolved mystery. Carl Bowden, a university history professor, has discovered a document that may prove an intriguing new theory of what may have happened to the colonists. He made one phone call to his graduate assistant, a Lumbee Indian. Three hours later he was found murdered under the rotunda of the library. Someone does not want the mystery of the Lost Colony to be solved and is wiling to kill to protect the secret. Luther Surles, Carl's oldest friend and publisher of a small town newspaper, is determined to help the police with the investigation. He eventually endangers himself as he unravels Carl's theory and solves the mystery of the Lost Colony of Roanoke Island.