Somerset, 2019
A rich musician, Tommy Johnson, invites Larh Thomas down to his medieval mansion to examine some documents he has found relating to a preacher, Robert Locke, who stayed at his house before going to New England in the 1700s. Locke's teaching led to the foundation of the White Lake Mission which has grown to be a powerful church in America. But he is a controversial figure, his reputation jealously guarded, and it emerges that the woman he took to New England was not his wife, and she may have helped him considerably with the writing of his most famous book, The Small Church. Larh unearths details of Locke's obsession with the Salem Witch trials, but is blocked at every turn.
The leader of the White Lake Mission, Pastor Green, tries to stop progress with the album and control the revelations about Robert Locke. Trouble increasingly dogs the band when Tommy Johnson starts to tour down the west coast of America to California where the Mission is based. This comes to a head when the singer's daughter is kidnapped, along with Larh and other staff. They are taken to a lawless part of the desert between LA and Las Vegas, and Pastor Green looses control of them to other criminal gangs.
