Irene Redfield is a light-skinned Black woman living in Harlem, New York, with her husband and two sons. After a chance encounter, Irene resumes contact with a childhood friend, Clare Kendry. Though Clare is also Black, she is even more fair-skinned than Irene and passes as a white woman--to the point that she's married to a deeply racist white man who has no knowledge of her race. As the two women's lives intertwine with fascination and repulsion, their troubling friendship leads them to examine the choices they've made and face the dangerous consequences.