Jessie Redmon Fauset's first novel shows a prescient awareness of the black middle class's quest for social equality in the early twentieth century and of the limited vocational choices confronting both black and white American women in that era. Set in Philadelphia some 60 years ago, There Is Confusion traces the lives of Joanna Mitchell and Peter Bye, whose families must come to terms with an inheritance of prejudice and discrimination as they struggle for legitimacy and respect.