The visit -- George Strake -- Peter -- The great fire of Rome -- Vatican Hill -- Pius's gamble -- Pope Pius XII and his team -- The clues in the Vatican Library -- Into the City of the Dead -- Inside the tomb -- The three amigos -- The war -- The flood and the curse -- Margherita Guarducci -- The inscriptions speak -- The bones speak -- Ferrua's revenge -- The necropolis uncovered -- Guarducci alone: a new beginning -- Return of the apostle -- The great persecution and Helena

"In 1939, a team of workers beneath the Vatican unearthed an early Christian grave. This surprising discovery launched a secret quest that would last decades -- a quest to discover the long-lost burial place of the apostle Peter. From earliest times, Christian tradition held that Peter -- a lowly fisherman from Galilee, whom Christ made leader of his Church -- was executed in Rome by Emperor Nero and buried on Vatican Hill. But his tomb had been lost to history. Now, funded anonymously by a wealthy American, a small army of workers embarked on the dig of a lifetime. The incredible sometimes shocking, story of the seventy-five-year search and its key players has never been fully told -- until now. The quest would pit one of the twentieth century's most talented archaeologists -- a woman -- against top Vatican insiders. The Fisherman's Tomb is a story of the triumph of faith and genius against all odds,"--page [4] of cover