The year is 1910, and the place, Seth Holly's boarding house. Seth owns a boarding house but also makes pots and pans, which he sells. Seth and Bertha Holly are watching Bynum who is in the backyard, seemingly possessed by something spiritual but unidentified. Seth is bothered by this, Bertha, less so. She wants to talk about Jeremy, who is boarding with them and who has been arrested for being drunk in public. Seth voices his concerns about freed slaves in the northern states. He thinks they do not have enough street smarts to survive out on their own.
Rutherford Selig arrives to order dustpans from Seth and starts talking to Bynum who is not making much sense. He continually references a Shiny Man whom he has encountered and who shared the meaning of life with him. Selig leaves as fast as he can and meets Jeremy on his way out. Jeremy complains that he wasn't drunk at all the night before and that the cops picked him up because he is black. He is interrupted by the arrival of two new potential customers,Herald Loomis and his daughter, Zonia. Herald is searching for his wife, Martha, but does not elaborate further as to the reason why. Seth is troubled by Herald; he thinks he looks mean and he doesn't really want to help him find his wife because he doesn't look like he will treat her right.
A week later, Seth and Bertha are in the kitchen again, and Seth is still concerned about Herald Loomis and the still unexplained reason for his search for his wife. He thinks he knows where Martha is but he doesn't want to tell. He just doesn't get a good vibe from him. Rutherford Selig steps in to help find Martha. He is known as a people finder, and once Herald learns this, he pays him to seek out Martha and tell him where she is.
The following day sees the arrival of Molly Cunningham. She missed her train to Cincinnati and needs a place to stay. Jeremy likes her right away and mutters something about a good woman is all a man needs in order to have a good life.
A few days later, Seth finds himself in the kitchen with all of his boarders. He suggests a sing-song and dance, but Herald Loomis is angered by this, and marches into the kitchen demanding that they stop singing immediately. He talks in tongues and starts to hallucinate.
This prompts Seth to tell him to leave. He doesn't believe the hallucination was spiritually motivated. He thinks Loomis was drunk. He gives him the rest of the week to find somewhere else to live. Jeremy admits to Seth that he has been fired. He refused to give his foreman a bribe of fifty cents to enable him to keep his job and as a result doesn't have one anymore. Seth is furious because to keep fifty cents he has given up eight dollars a week. Molly tells him to go back to work and force their hand. Jeremy doesn't want to. He wants to travel around the country with a strong, feisty woman who knows what she wants and who she is and he thinks Molly might just be that woman. She agrees to travel with him but refuses to travel back to the south.
Bynum sings whilst he plays dominoes with Seth. Loomis, who seems to have something against singing, asks him to stop because he doesn't like the song, Joe Turner. He was once taken away by Turner and his cohorts whist he was preaching to some men who were gambling. He spent seven years working on Turner's chain gang and when he returned home he found his daughter, but not his wife, waiting for him. Now he doesn't know what has become of his wife.
The Loomises leave the boarding house that Saturday. Martha shows up at the boarding house shortly afterwards, with Selig, wanting to know where her husband and daughter are. They reappear and he tells her that he has spent the last ten years of his life looking for her and hoping to start back where they left off in their lives. Martha, though, has moved on. She got tired of wiating for him to come home. Loomis is distraught and the balance of his mind, already disturbed, is destroyed all together. He denounces his religion and stabs himself in the chest. Bynum realizes that he is the Shining Man.
