This "thoroughly engaging" third novel by the author of Beetlecreek ("[a] quiet masterpiece" —Kirkus Reviews) follows a Black journalist in the 1970s whose bourgeois life is turned upside down by the subject of his writing assignment. Edwards, a freelance writer and Black Studies professor at a small college in New York City, is assigned a story for New Black Woman magazine: a profile of Mona Pariss, an aging former singer whose popularity in Europe once rivaled Josephine Baker's. With his creditors at the door, Professor Edwards beats a path to the crumbling Harlem apartment house where Mona Pariss, once the toast of Europe for her singing, now lives in squalid obscurity. As his interviews progress, Edwards is gradually drawn into Mona's strange, mystical world. At the same time, he finds himself entering into an affair with a beautiful assistant at New Black Woman magazine. Ultimately he becomes entangled in the lives of both women and nearly loses himself in the process.