"Red Hat on the Boardwalk" follows the history of one African-American family's plight as they explore the taboo of racism within the Black race from the turn of the twentieth century through the beginning of the 1970s. Born with fair skin to African-American parents in Philadelphia, Mary Baxter wants to cross the segregation line and be a part of the white world. She becomes a nurse and falls in love with a Jewish doctor named Adam. Hiding her true ethnicity from him, they marry and have two children with the same fair skin as Mary.
When their daughter, Geraldine, becomes ill, Mary is terrified of her secret being exposed. But Mary's actions have far-reaching implications for her family, stretching through three generations and seven decades. Author T. N. Talley pens a remarkably realistic portrait of a family battling racism from both ends of the spectrum-white and black.