 Desperate to find whether Uncle James might have said anything to anyone about his father before he died, he travels to Birmingham and, following a complex sequence of events, comes face to face with his father.The experience is deeply traumatic, but clears the way for him to accept the call to the ministry and he pursues a short but successful career as a Calvinistic Methodist minister before dying relatively young from a wasting disease (very likely tuberculosis).The whole novel is presented as if it were the autobiography he wrote between being forced to retire from the ministry and his eventual death.