Throughout her [...] literary career, Nella Larsen wrote piercing dramas about the Black middle class that featured sensitive, spirited heroines struggling to find a place where they belonged. Passing, Larsen's best-known work, is a disturbing story about the unraveling lives of two childhood friends, one of whom turns her back on her past and marries a white racist. Just as disquieting is the portrait in Quicksand of biracial Helga Crane, who is...

Nella Larsen was an important writer associated with the Harlem Renaissance. While she was not prolific, her work was powerful and critically acclaimed. Collected here are both, of her novels, "Passing" and "Quicksand", as well as all three of her published short stories; "Freedom," "The Wrong Man", and "Sanctuary". "Quicksand" was autobiographical in nature and examined a woman's need for sexual fulfilment balanced against respectability and acceptance...