It begins in Boise, Idaho and follows Emma Lou in her journey to college at USC and a move to Harlem, New York City for work.

Set during the Harlem Renaissance, the novel explores Emma Lou's experiences with colorism, discrimination by lighter-skinned African Americans due to her dark skin.

Believing that her color will reduce her marriageability, her mother's people try to help her lighten her skin with bleaching and commercially available creams, but nothing works.

On registration day she meets a black girl named Hazel Mason; unfortunately, when she speaks Emma Lou decides that she is the wrong sort, definitely lower-class.

Other girls, though pleasant, never invite her into their circles or sorority, especially when they recognize that they've seen her with Hazel, whose "minstrel" demeanor is not good for the black image.

When Hazel drops out of school, Grace Giles become Emma Lou's friend but informs her that the sorority only accepts dark-skinned girls only if they are wealthy.

She returns to the agency and the manager, Mrs. Blake, invites her to lunch, and Emma Lou is "warmed toward any suggestion of friendliness" and glad to have "a chance to make a welcome contact".

[1] Mrs. Blake tells her about work prospects, saying that "lots of our Negro businessmen have a definite type of girl in mind and will not hire any other"; she advises Emma Lou to go to Columbia Teachers' College and train for a job in the public school system.

After lunch, Emma is walking on Seventh Avenue and while stopping to check her reflection, she notices a few young black men nearby and hears one comment, "There’s a girl for you 'Fats'", to which the reply is: "Man, you know I don’t haul no coal.

"[1] Determined to stay in New York, Emma Lou finds a job as a maid to Arline Strange, an actress "in an alleged melodrama of Negro life in Harlem.

Arline and her brother from Chicago take Emma Lou to her first cabaret one night, where he makes her a drink from his hip flask.

One night, after this argument with Emma Lou, Alva returns to his room to find Geraldine sleeping in his bed; when she wakens, she announces that she's pregnant by him.

Two years later, Emma Lou works as a personal maid/companion to Clere Sloane, a retired actress married to Campbell Kitchen, a white writer very interested in Harlem.

Geraldine and Alva's son has been born disfigured and possibly intellectually disabled, and seems to bring them endless trouble; they often wish he would die.

Emma Lou realizes she has spent her life running: she ran from Boise's color prejudice; she left Los Angeles for similar reasons.

In 2004 Daniel Scott III published an article noting that Thurman was interested in Harlem in the 1920s as a place for personal transformation.

People were stimulated by meeting many strangers and by opportunities afforded by clubs, cabarets, concert halls, theatres, and other venues.