1928 saw the publication not only of Home To Harlem but also of several other important Renaissance novels. Nella Larsen’s Quicksand was one of these signal appearances. Born in Chicago in 1891, Larsen tried several careers, beginning and ending her working life as a nurse, but also serving as a librarian in the New York Public Library system. At some point Larsen decided upon a writer’s life and set out consciously to achieve that goal. Her marriage to a physicist of impeccable family solidified her position in black New York society, and recommendations from such notables as Walter White and Carl Van Vechten helped her become the first black woman to win a Guggenheim. In addition to two novellas, Larsen published several short stories, one of which, “Sanctuary” (1930), brought her infamy because of plagiarism charges leveled against her, accusations of which she was eventually cleared. (The editors of Forum, who published the work, reviewed Larsen’s drafts of her story and one titled “Mrs. Adis” by Sheila Kaye-Smith; they supported Larsen’s claim of literary coincidence.) In addition to her professional woes Larsen fought a bitter and public divorce, for her professor-husband had an affair with a white colleague. Did the strains of her life exhaust her creative energies? Whatever the reasons, Larsen would publish nothing after 1930, despite announced plans for a third novel, “Fall Fever.” Slender though they may be, Larsen’s two novels remain a valuable legacy of the Renaissance. Their psychologically astute portraits of women walking the tightrope of color, class, and sexual respectability continue to win admiring critics.