Song of Solomon opens with a minor character, Robert Smith, a North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance agent, standing on top of Mercy Hospital wearing a pair of blue wings, ready to fly. As people gather to watch, Ruth Foster Dead suddenly goes into labor as the chaos surrounding Smith, who eventually jumps off the building, escalates. Ruth is brought in, “the first colored expectant mother […] to give birth inside its wards” (4-5). Macon Dead III, who in a few years will be given the nickname Milkman, is born.

As the novel jumps forward in time, Ruth lives a sad, unfulfilled life. Her father, who died a few years earlier, was a well-respected doctor able to afford an impressive house for his family. But Ruth feels trapped, both in that big house and in her oppressive marriage. Her husband Macon Dead Jr. is full of rage at Ruth and cuts her down with withering comments. Her only joy is a secretive one. Even though her son is already four years old, she still nurses him, needing the intimacy, until she is discovered by Freddie, a nosy tenant who laughs with surprise when he discovers her nursing Macon.