The story takes place in 1890s in the Midwest city of Groveland (critics consider this a fictional stand-in for Cleveland, where Chesnutt lived).

Before his death, Merwin assured his family: his wife, daughter Stella and son George, that they would be taken care of financially by his profitable investments.

Mrs. Merwin blames the family’s financial difficulties on Wendell Truscott because she believes that he ruined her husband and, stole money from him, and took over his company.

She concludes that he is a cold-hearted boss who does not care about establishing relationships with his employees, but also that he is a very smart, savvy businessman who efficiently gets missions accomplished.

instead of copying what the proprietor says, she gains his trust enough to write letters on her own, and gives her the charge of reviewing the financial books daily.

Stella struggles slightly with the moral implications of betraying her boss, but she will do anything to help her family leading to her decision to find the incriminating documents.

The mother visits her daughter and as they walk around the city she comments on how the rich residents made their money insisting that they did so in a dishonorable fashion.

Truscott is very pleased that she discovers this crime, but by the time they inform the authorities Ross leaves town and makes it all the way to a South American country where there is no extradition.

At the dinner the wealthy guests receive news from Wall Street that a bank in London collapsed and a financial crisis is imminent.

Truscott is hit hard by the crisis and as a result cannot get banks to lend him money for the big project he has been working on thereby putting it on the verge of failure.

The papers show the scheme that her father was planning that is very similar to Truscott's current endeavor revolutionizing the oil refining industry.

She believes that this is the evidence that will prove their wealth; however, Stella then sees through the documents how her father's plan failed because of an economic collapse and the failures of his unscrupulous business partners.

Stella's findings cement the family's place outside the upper class of society and prevent Mrs. Merwin's dream of returning to their previous life impossible.

Stella returns the stolen papers to Mr. Truscott accompanied by a letter explaining her true identity as well as giving him her reason for resignation of the position.

Luckily Matilda Wedderburn comes to Truscott’s rescue, even though he put their romance to an end, by offering her good friend the money that he desperately needs therefore saving the company.

Stella moves back to Cloverdale leaving Groveland in her rear-view mirror because she wants to forget about her experience working for Wendell Truscott as much as possible.

Stella Merwin (Miss Smith): The protagonist of the novel is a "new woman" of the late 19th century who pursues a life outside the traditional roles of wife and mother.

The widow has trouble dealing with her decline in status and yearns to return to her high place in society George Merwin: Stella’s brother, who also lives and works in Groveland.

The Merwins family's drastic decline in financial standing is similar to that of the title character in William Dean Howells' novel The Rise of Silas Lapham, now considered a literary classic.

Twenty-first century scholar Matthew Wilson believes Chesnutt may have been trying to appeal in this work to white readers, who made up most of the market for literature.

Matthew Wilson says about African-American authors at the turn of the 20th century: "Very little expressed interest in representations of whiteness in the black imagination.

Black cultural and social critics allude to such representations in their writing, yet only a few have dared to make explicit those perceptions of whiteness that they think will discomfort or antagonize readers.

It was a time of reconciliation between the North and South, and members of the Northern literary establishment were interested in black writers who portrayed the slavery years.

Chesnutt also addressed competition among classes of whites by the late 19th century, as some lower-class men achieved new wealth and political power.

Based on the background to North Carolina's disfranchisement of blacks in the late 1890s and events of the 1898 Wilmington Race Riot, in which whites conducted a coup d'état of the elected city government, the novel was described by William Dean Howells as "bitter."

In his introduction to this novel, editor Mathew Wilson says, "African American writers have had no right to represent white-life exclusively because to grant that right would be to acknowledge the permeability of the color line".

[1] Wilson believes that Chesnutt has still not received the recognition he deserves for this pioneering effort in crossing the color line to write about white society.