One night in Rome Robert Thorn, American diplomat, exchanges his still-born son for a new-born orphan. Only Thorn and the priest who arranged the unofficial adoption could tell the difference. Kathy and Robert Thorn called the child Damien.

Five years later in England Damien's Nanny dies tragically. A ferocious black dog and an officious new Nanny mysteriously appear, to guard the child. Kathy Thorn is badly hurt in a fall. And a wild-eyed priest tells Thorn that Damien is the spawn of the devil. In an agonizing and frenzied search that takes him to Rome, Jerusalem and back to London, Robert Thorn begins to unravel the horrible truth...

A powerful, spell-binding story of a child who is not a child and a man who must become less than a father and more than a man.