After a shocking train accident, the Reverend Howat Freemantle is hailed as a hero for pulling several victims from the wreck at considerable risk and some injury to himself. Howat suffers a breakdown in the wake of the disaster, and takes several months to heal both physically and emotionally.

Ironically, for Howat Freemantle, the Nonconformist minister of the mining and manufacturing town of Browdley, the week leading up to this dramatic accident is, in most respects, more than usually ordinary, consisting of the standard rounds of sermons, visiting, committee work and correspondence; all of it accompanied by a sense of increasing self-doubt, and an inability to feel that he is doing anyone any real good. But still, there are consolations: giving a lecture on music; selecting books for a young man recovering from serious injury; debating social conditions with the local Labour representative; dropping in on his daughter's school-class and telling stories (and, as he is tartly informed afterwards, disrupting discipline for days afterwards) - all activities, Howat realises worriedly, that have nothing at all to do with his religious duties.

And yet the week is not quite ordinary, for it is in this week that Howat makes an appointment with a London specialist about the almost constant and growing pain in his throat. Then comes the shocking news that Elizabeth Garland, the daughter of the chapel secretary, has suddenly left home; word that she has run away with a man - and a married man at that - is soon all over Browdley. Howat, who gave Elizabeth German lessons, is bewildered to receive from her a short letter thanking him for his help and paying her outstanding debt, but containing no hint of the girl's consciousness of her situation. He then makes up his mind - albeit reluctantly - that this is a chance to do some real ministerial work, and writes to Elizabeth to arrange a meeting. When Friday dawns, Howat sets out for London and his two appointments - neither one of which goes remotely as he expects...

And Now Good-Bye is another of James Hilton's beautifully understanding character studies. In Howat Freemantle we have a kind man, an understanding man, a dedicated man - but a man who has lived his life within a kind of emotional cocoon, shying away in bewilderment from the passions and realities of the world at large. In turns humorous, wry and sad, the novel tells the story of a thwarted life, yet one quite without bitterness.

We follow Howat around Browdley as he undertakes his slightly grim duties and his mild guilty pleasures, making acquaintance with the people who comprise the circle of his acquaintances: the querulous wife, domineering sister-in-law and self-absorbed daughter with whom he lives; the old woman so long dying that even the local doctor has started placing bets on her; the chapel secretary, whose personal creed is that we forgive our enemies, not our daughters; and the children of Browdley, with whom Howat is, however briefly, able to relax and be himself.

Then comes his trip to London---and a shattering emotional journey, in the course of which, at the age of forty-three, Howat Freemantle is forced to examine his own soul - and finds himself looking at stranger...

But now, on this Friday morning in November as the Manchester-London express raced over the plains of Northamptonshire, there could have seemed little eccentric, much less dangerous, in the quiet, tired-looking man who took lunch by himself at the far end of the dining-car. He had been sleeping for part of the journey, and there were lines beneath his eyes that made many a traveler, especially women, give him a fleetingly compassionate glance as they hurried along the centre aisle. There was something in his face that curiously attracted most people---a sort of rather sad winsomeness that made them feel they could rely on him for infinite depths of understanding. Though, as a matter of fact, he did not always understand as well as they imagined; people often poured out intimate personal confessions to which his carefully kind attention was only a mask to cover up extreme uncomfortableness and a bewildered lack of comprehension.