- PAST LIVES explores the nightmare of multiple personality disorder when encountered by American neurosurgeon John Macandrew in one of his patients after brain surgery. His patient’s agony and the dreadful revenge taken by her husband, who wrongly blames Macandrew for his wife’s condition, brings him across the Atlantic in search of answers. His quest takes him from the windswept ramparts of Culzean Castle in Scotland to a research laboratory at Edinburgh University and from there to a remote Benedictine monastery; from Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris to Marseilles and across the Mediterranean to Corsica and Malta. Someone knows the secret of multiple personality disorder and they’d like it to stay that way. But the sinister Dom Ignatius has found out and plans to use the knowledge for his own selfish ends.