A novel on children of mixed marriages. The protagonists are two sisters in Boston, daughters of a black professor and a white woman. One daughter passes for black and attends black school while her sister passes for white and attends white school. But the classmates know and when it comes to bigotry, equality reigns among the races. A debut in fiction. Birdie and Cole are the daughters of a black father and a white mother, intellectuals and activists...

Howard Belsey, a Rembrandt scholar who doesn't like Rembrandt, is an Englishman abroad and a long-suffering professor at Wellington, a liberal New England arts college. He has been married for thirty years to Kiki, an American woman who no longer resembles the sexy activist she once was. Their three children passionately pursue their own paths: Levi quests after authentic blackness, Zora believes that intellectuals can redeem everybody, and Jerome...