From the Back Cover: In Old New York, there is a truce between the races. The poor whites stick to their tenements and their kind and the poor blacks stick to theirs. There is a small neutral ground at the corner where the children play, innocent of the roles they will have to assume later in life, It is here that the young black boy Jim and the young white girl Ella strike up a friendship. Time passes. That neutral ground was too small for them, Ella has rejected Jim and taken up with Mickey, a young tough. Jim has taken refuge in his studies, which earns him the hostility of other blacks, as trying to pass for white. The years go by. Ella is an outcast. After losing Mickey's child out of wedlock she has no use for him, rejecting him even as he dumps her. Then Jim, struggling to pass the law bar with little success, admits he has never stopped loving her. His honest warmth and friendship draws her to him and Ella marries him, which angers both races. They leave the country, but it does not help. No matter where they go, Ella is convinced she is being judged for marrying a black man, and begins a horrifying descent into madness. Worse, she is determined to take Jim down with her, to hold on to the one thing she still loves in her lunacy. Even if it destroys him.