Jordan is a young black professor in search of a world not defined by his race or class. He finds it by having an affair with Daphne, a wealthy white woman - also one of his students. Meanwhile Sophia, a young beautiful black woman, is in love with him, but hides her love to marry a man with secrets of his own. When Daphne becomes pregnant, and her abusive husband, Mark, comes in search of his wife, everyone's life suddenly gets a lot more complicated. A powerful voice in American fiction' - Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'