Stained Glass
Adam Fletcher's story is one of self-discovery told through the perspective of an 18 year-old man-boy who suffered a stroke after being bit by a snake in the Iraq War. He returned to his country unable to speak (aphasia) but luckily recovered within a month of his return home narrowly escaping brain damage. After a year of working for his Uncle, he feels ready for college. He enrolls at Texas Tech University and decides to study Architecture in hopes of one day working for a firm that designs churches. After three years of school, he gets the travel bug like most college students. He and his Army buddy Google decide to travel to Europe in hopes of surveying all the great stained glass cathedrals. Google has an interest in stained glass for different reasons. Along the way, Adam develops a desire to travel to Egypt. He develops this desire after constant reminders and hints that what he's looking for can be found in that country. Adam is also an evangelical Christian. He is drawn to any down and out non-believer that he meets along the way, from African immigrants selling Prada bags just outside the old Roman forum to a gypsy woman sleeping in the bathroom on the train to Budapest. Finally, when he and Google are Athen's making their way to the acropolis, Adam can't stop looking at an ad to travel to Egypt. It seemed too good to be true. They could travel to Cairo for the weekend and be on the plane to London in time to fly home.
While in Cairo, Adam visits the booksellers market. He isn't interested in any of the cheap paperbacks being bought or sold there. He seems drawn to a girl (about his age) sitting by the curb with a box of letters for sale. He will eventually discover that this girl was the maid for a man who has recently died and she's selling the last of his possessions, a box of letters between Shareef and Florence. His mother and father.
He insists on contacting his father and knowing the truth. He discovered that his dad knew he was sterile and that Adam was not his son, but didn't have the heart to tell him. His biological father was Egyptian and was wed to his mother while she lived in Egypt. The letters become the key to understanding his real parents. He learns that his mother left Texas to marry and live with Shareef, but something went wrong. She had to return home for what was supposed to be a quick trip, but something happened to her that made her leave with the child in her womb. That something caused her to want to marry George when he found her struggling on the ground after the dust storm.