In the 1980s, Dr. Arthur M. Evans helped a self-styled "biblical archeologist" bring the discovery of Noah's Ark to the world, only to have to discredit their "discovery" (and handicap his own career) when better lab techniques proved them wrong. Thirty years later, he is an Oxford tutor who's sworn off adventuring... until his old archeology partner sends him new research and a dire warning, right before disappearing from his latest dig site during an armed attack.

Meanwhile, Arthur's gifted sixteen-year-old grandson has started uncovering family secrets, which have caught the eye of an eccentric millionaire myth-hunter, an enigmatic man in a suit, and a Kurdish paramilitary group. Now hunted themselves, the Evanses have been thrust into a quest that will connect lost places of the ancient world throughout a conflict-riddled Middle East primed for revolution. They have the chance to solve a mystery that will link Gilgamesh, Eden, Noah's Ark, and the Minotaur's Maze in ways that could change history forever. If they can survive long enough to prove their discoveries.

The Chaos Spiral is an intricately woven historical mystery: part action-archeology, part family adventure, part international conspiracy. To solve the mystery and save their lives as well as their teams', the Evanses must dive deeply into the world's oldest flood and creation myths, as told from four different traditions. They will travel from the dreaming spires of Oxford to the drought-parched Middle East during the tense preamble to the 2011 Arab Spring. The quest promises to take them to Ugarit, Antioch, Crete, not one but two alleged resting sites of Noah's Ark, and finally, just maybe, the shores of Eden itself.