Anna is a child soldier in Angola's brutal civil war in 2003. She escapes its' clutches by hiding in a church and soon finds herself adopted by a wealthy Virginia family. Once in America, she is unknowingly brought to live on the very ground where her ancestors once toiled in slavery. One day, she slips into the past and witnesses an unspeakable murder of which she is the only witness. Now she must make the impossible decision of which world she belongs, until the decision is made for her, and she comes to understand the meaning of family in a way she could scarcely imagine.

In Gershman's riveting telling, the past and the present become intertwined in a story that that passes through generations as well as continents. Torn from her homeland into the world of foreign adoption, Anna tries to make sense of her fate, until she finds herself in yet a third reality: the cellar of her new home is a portal to the 1819 past, where she is member of a close-knit family, as well as a slave. From war-torn Africa to the hallowed stories that repurposed plantations now harbor, The Visitor is a spellbinding tale that calls to question what it means to belong.