Tom Wilcher is a miserly lawyer deeply at odds with the modern world. On the verge of death, he plots to run away and marry his former housekeeper Sara Monday. He reviews his life and times, looking back on the bloody conflicts that ushered in the twentieth century and on the varied fortunes of the close-knit family that he both resents and adores. To Be a Pilgrim is a study in contradictions, the confession of a political radical turned reactionary, of a religious man and sometime sexual offender, of a miserly landowner who is also a passionate defender of the beauties of an English countryside threatened by economic development. In the end, however, Cary shows us that Tom Wilcher, for all his disappointment and anger, is indeed a pilgrim, searching for redemption almost in spite of himself.