Set in 1948, the story begins in the Watts area of Los Angeles, with Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins, a Houstonian — from that city's Fifth Ward — who lost his job at an aviation defense plant in Los Angeles and is unable to pay the mortgage on his LA home. Easy is sitting in a bar run by Joppy, a friend who is also from Houston, when a man named DeWitt Albright walks into the bar and offers him a job finding a young white woman named Daphne Monet, who is rumored to be hanging out in bars frequented mostly by African Americans, although white women are allowed inside.