Angie Bigelow has won the jackpot: a $324 million lottery ticket. How will she spend the money? Will she share it with the father of her children, dissolute Dean Lee Grandet-even though he''s an inveterate gambler she plans on leaving? Angie, the lost soul at the center of Bill Cotter''s poignant and darkly comic novel, The Splendid Ticket, is facing this dilemma when a new tragedy tears through their household. Is that mere slip of numbered paper in the watch pocket of Angie''s Levi''s their ticket to freedom or the beginning of the end? In a fast-moving plot, shot through with originality and heart, this is the story of the Grandets discovering the alchemy that holds their family together, testing its limits and running headlong into whatever their futures hold. Set in the verdant and sun-soaked Texas Hill Country, The Splendid Ticket tracks the push and pull, the bitter tension and the potent attraction, between these two impulsive individuals-and everyone caught in the storm that surrounds them.