How It All Goes Down
One day, a dude named Son jumps off a ship and hitches a ride to the nearest dry land on a passing yacht. After living in the swamp for a few days, he eventually gets caught sneaking around the house of a rich dude named Valerian Street. Instead of calling the police, though, Valerian decides to annoy his wife and his servants by inviting Son to stay in his guest room. Valerian's two elderly black servants, Sydney and Ondine, are deeply offended at this. They have spent their entire lives serving Valerian and have never gotten anywhere near the guest room, but now Valerian is offering the room to someone who broke into the house. Unfair.
Meanwhile, Valerian's wife Margaret refuses to come out of her room until Son is gone. Sydney and Ondine's niece, a twenty-five year old model named Jade, falls in love with Son. After a major family blowup at the Christmas dinner table, Son and Jade decides to leave to live in New York together. Happily ever after time? Ha.
Son wants the two of them to get married and move to the town he grew up in, an all-black community in Florida called Eloe. Jade, though, is not cut out for this kind of life. She wants to make money and see the world. Son calls her out for acting too "white," but Jade criticizes Son for refusing to seek success through culture and education.
Eventually, Son and Jade's relationship reaches a breaking point. Jade heads back to the island where her aunt and uncle are still servants. She says goodbye to her mommy and daddy and takes off to restart her modeling life in France. Son comes looking for her, but she's already gone when he gets there. He ends the novel by climbing through the fog on a bunch of rocks that will hopefully take him to Valerian's house. He can't stop loving Jade, even though the differences between them seem too big to overcome.