Mother of God

in book three, a mission oak chair in the basement of an old state mental hospital leads wally winchester to take a job as a substitute voc ed teacher so he can snoop around for vintage stickley furniture. after a rocky initiation to the world of defiant students and narrow-minded administrators, he invents an ebay class that opens a new world to the wayward youngsters but puts him at odds with the secretary of schools, a rigid ex-marine who has an eye for his wife.
in the endpapers of an old leather-bound atlas he finds in the old estate library, wally finds a cryptic inscription that sends him to eastern russia in search of the kazanskaya, the mother of god of kazan, known as the protectress of russia and believed lost in a turn-of-the-century fire. with the prize of a lifetime in his possession he faces a five-day train ride to moscow that turns into a circus of danger and deception as he rides a rumor wave spreading across the russian homeland that something wonderful is about to occur.