Damon Guster, a middle-aged English poet and textbook publisher, unreflectingly takes on the identity, though not the name, of his boyhood friend and teacher, Tristan Wrye.The story begins when Guster reads an item in the Times informing him that the poet Wrye, long thought dead, is now dying in a London hospital. He goes home and while brooding over Wrye he has an hallucinatory experience. An angel with a flaming pen appears, enters him and compels him to write. From this enforced collaboration comes an elegy commemorating the death of Tristan Wrye. Guster knows it is by far his best poem and will seal his reputation as the great poet of his day. There is a complication. Instead of dying, Wrye is gradually recovering. In fact he has been re-discovered as an important literary figure. Guster encourages Wrye, despite his ill health, to accept an invitation by a dubious American agency to do a tour of readings in America. He secretly follows, half hoping that Wrye will not survive the tour, half wanting to protect him. A series of misadventures now occur culminating in the death of Guster. It remains for Wrye to explain the secret that bound him and Guster together.