Paul Rivers, an ailing mathematician lovelessly married to an English émigré; Christina Peck, an upper-middle-class suburban housewife and mother of two girls; and Jack Jordan, a born-again ex-con, are brought…

A rush-hour fender-bender on New York City’s crowded FDR Drive, under most circumstances, wouldn’t set off a chain reaction that could decimate two people’s lives. But on this day, at…