When the Revd Robert Melton first arrives at St Mungo's, his initial enthusiasm quickly turns to despondency - until the biggest jackpot in US lottery history triggers a series of uncanny events that throws him, and the seemingly unconnected lives of people on both sides of the Atlantic, into a vortex of questioning, self-doubt and the search for truth. For all of them, try as they might to escape it, the past remains a constant presence. From the run-down despair of Robert's dying inner London parish to the yearnings for love and physical contact of the city's social outcasts - and from the...