Helga Crane yearns to become more than she is and to feel the world more intensely. She consequently dismisses her native Chicago, New York's Harlem, Copenhagen even. She also passes on opportunities for extended family, for marriage, and for true love. What is always latent in this truly outstanding work; is how much the background of 1920's American racial segregation defines Helga's malaise, and how much - paradoxically - is of herown doing... The title of this novel is tragically fitting: living in a country with so much unresolved tensions, so much injustice and hypocrisy and violence could very well feel like walking in quicksand.