Harlem Rhapsody

In 1919, Jessie Redmon Fauset arrives in Harlem to take up her dream job as literary editor of The Crisis, the magazine founded by W.E.B. Du Bois. The first Black woman to hold such a position at a major publication, Jessie discovers and nurtures a generation of writers, including Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and Nella Larsen, and helps ignite the Harlem Renaissance. She also writes her own acclaimed first novel. Beneath her public triumphs runs a private risk: Du Bois is not only her boss but her lover, a married man fourteen years her senior. The novel follows Jessie as she balances ambition, art, and a love affair that could undo everything she has built.