Rather, the book is mostly the personal story of how Marino, a young man at the time, became fascinated with the shroud, how the relic, years later, brought he and Sue Benford together, and then how, despite numerous obstacles, including scorn and disrespect from other shroudies, they finally were able to get scientists to take their research seriously. If they are right – and the consensus of the shroud-science community is that they are – their research will be chronicled with the rest of the epic shroud story as one of the most important developments in the 100-plus-years of scientific study of the relic since the first photographs of it in 1898 revealed the strange nature of it’s mysterious images.