Godwin Peak leaves his lowly Midlands home to carve out a career as a journalist in London. His poverty and origins hamper him at every turn, but at last one of his articles - attacking the hypocrisy of the Victoria Church - is accepted. Then catastrophically, Peak falls in love with devout well-born Sidwell Warricombe. To be acceptable to her, both socially and ideologically, his only course is to enter the Church.
