When Shadow Moon is released from prison a few days early, following the death of his wife, he meets the enigmatic Mr. Wednesday and is conscripted into his employ as bodyguard. Attacked his first day on the job, Shadow quickly discovers that this role may be more than he bargained for.

As Mr. Wednesday begins recruitment for the coming battle, Shadow Moon travels with him to Chicago, and agrees to a very high stakes game of checkers with the old Slavic god, Czernobog.

Shadow questions the terms of his employment when Mr. Wednesday informs him of his plan to rob a bank (because, naturally, every army needs a source of funding). Just when Shadow thought his life couldn’t get any more complicated, he returns to his motel room to a surprising discovery...

Alternating between the past and the present, Laura’s life and death are explored—how she met Shadow, how she died, and how exactly she came to be sitting on the edge of his motel room bed.

Trying to work things out with his dead and unfaithful wife, Shadow’s emotional reunion is interrupted when he and Mr. Wednesday are kidnapped by the New Gods.

On the run after the New Gods’ show of force, Shadow and Mr. Wednesday seek safe haven with one of Mr. Wednesday’s oldest friends, Vulcan, God of the Fire and the Forge.