Few novelists have written about the Catholic Church with more drama, insight, and prophecy than Morris West. His new novel centers on Luca Rossini, once a young priest savagely tortured by the Argentina military in the '70s. To cover up the scandal, Rossini was taken back to Rome and kept in exile. Under the patronage of the reigning pontiff, he has become a cardinal, one of the church's most efficient diplomats and a member of the Electoral College. When the reigning pope dies, Luca loses his patron -- though not his power or his iron will -- and his faith, already shaken by his past, is tested anew. On the eve of the papal election, the woman who saved his life and for whom, even in exile, he has nourished a deep and abiding love, comes again into his life. The wounds of the past are reopened, and Rossini finds himself in a new crisis of political responsibility and faces the turmoil of his own spirit. This compelling drama of love and passion, political intrigue, and heady suspense shows once again why Morris West is one of the greatest novelists of our time.