In his workbook, a New York City novelist records the contents of his teeming brain. Now he has found a story he thinks may be his next novel: the large brass cross behind the altar of a run-down Episcopal church has been moved to the roof of the Synagogue for Evolutionary Judaism. Having befriended the church's maverick rector and the young woman rabbi who leads the synagogue, the novelist finds that their struggles with their respective traditions are relevant to the case. As he joins the clerics in pursuit of the mystery, it broadens what proves to be a quest for an authentic spirituality at the end of this tortured century.