Mark Sternum is full of droll observations about the rules that govern our language. A professor who teaches spelling and grammar at Boston's McClintock College ("An odd job for a college professor," he is told, "but no one else seems to be doing it"), he leads a diligent if somewhat detached life.

Friends and family try to coax him into deeper involvement, but he keeps his lover at arm's length and screens all incoming calls - including his eccentric sister's "word pictures" about the waning days of their comatose mother. Then Rashelle Whippet, an African-American single mother who fails the college's basic skills test for the last time, accuses Mark of "prejudgism," and he is fired. Blown off course, he monitors the ensuing academic skirmish from a distance as his case makes national headlines.

In the midst of this mess, his lover decides to move out of town, an anonymous supporter E-mails him daily advice, and his father, Thomas, a photographer famous for his pictures of the Shaker communities that once thrived in America, turns up for a visit. Mark is particularly surprised by this last turn of events: he had believed his father was dead.

The mysterious Thomas moves in and begins a tale about Sister Celia and the Negro Jesus who visited the Shakers more than a hundred years earlier. In spite of himself, Mark is mesmerized by the story, which offers him the chance to understand, finally, his father's lonely passion for the Shakers.