Jake enlists in the US military hoping to fight Germans but is assigned menial construction labor in France instead of combat.

Jake deserts his post in France, makes his way to London, then boards a Cardiff freighter bound for Harlem.

Jake meets an attractive young woman at the Baltimore cabaret on his very first night back in Harlem.

Jake wakes the next morning to find the woman has returned his fifty dollars tucked in his pocket with an affectionate note.

Jake reunites with war buddy Zeddy Plummer at Uncle Doc's saloon and begins settling back into Harlem life.

Jake searches Harlem's streets for the woman from his first night but cannot find her address or even recall her name.

Jake moves in with cabaret singer Rose, rejecting her offer to make him a kept man while enjoying her company.

Jake quits a dockside unloading job after discovering he was recruited as a strikebreaker against union workers.

Jake physically intervenes to stop Zeddy from stabbing loan shark Nije Gridley during a confrontation at a buffet flat.

Jake slaps Rose during a bitter confrontation, then packs his suitcase and walks out of her lodging for good.

Jake takes a job as cook on a Pennsylvania Railroad dining car and forms a close friendship with Haitian waiter Ray.

Jake stays through the night nursing Ray back to health after Ray overdoses on cocaine in the Pittsburgh sleeping quarters.

Jake falls gravely ill with a sexually transmitted infection and is forced to retreat to Harlem to recover.

Jake spots the woman he has been searching for at the Sheba Palace dance hall and rushes to her side.

Zeddy pulls a razor on Jake at a cabaret, Jake draws a gun, and Zeddy publicly exposes him as a deserter.

Jake Brown enlists in the US military hoping to fight but is confined to menial labor, leading him to desert and eventually sail back to Harlem. On his first night home he meets a captivating woman, sleeps with her, and loses her before learning her name, sparking an obsession that drives the rest of the novel. He drifts through Harlem's cabarets and rough encounters, living briefly with singer Rose before escaping a relationship that diminishes him. He finds purpose on the Pennsylvania Railroad, where a deep friendship with the Haitian intellectual Ray gives his wandering life new weight. A serious illness forces Jake back to Harlem, where spring brings a chance reunion with the woman — Felice — that he has been seeking all along. Their happiness is shattered when Zeddy attacks Felice and publicly exposes Jake as a military deserter, forcing the couple to flee Harlem for a fresh start in Chicago.

Jake's journey home, through Harlem's underworld, and toward Felice.

Jake's company in Brest faces racial violence from white American soldiers, leaving the men more afraid of their allies than the Germans.

Jake lives in London's East End with a white woman until the war ends, but grows to long for the black women of Harlem.

Jake arrives in New York, eats and drinks on Lenox Avenue, and drops his suitcase at Uncle Doc's saloon before exploring Harlem.

Jake and Zeddy visit the Congo cabaret, where entertainer Rose pursues Jake and invites him to share her room near dawn.

While living with Rose, Jake works casually as a longshoreman and borrows money from loan shark Nije Gridley between jobs.

Zeddy is invited to Ginhead Susy's Brooklyn flat party and moves in as her kept man shortly after.

Jake attends a raucous party at Susy's flat and coldly rebuffs the flirtatious advances of the unattractive Ms. Curdy.

Jake gains access to Madame Suarez's exclusive Harlem buffet flat through his connection to Rose and his natural charm.

Undercover Vice Squad officers spend two visits posing as wealthy white men slumming in Harlem to infiltrate Madame Suarez's flat.

The Vice Squad raid sends Madame Suarez to prison for six months and forces her boss to permanently close the Baltimore.

Jake sends Madame Laura to Rose's address as a prank, triggering a fierce confrontation between the two women over Jake.

Ray sends his girlfriend Agatha to check on the bedridden Jake, and the two share a quiet, candid visit.

Jake throws a farewell feast for Ray and James Grant at Aunt Hattie's before the two men ship out on a Pacific freighter.

Jake and Billy Biasse witness Yaller Prince beaten in the street by a former partner's boyfriend and help him until an ambulance arrives.

Zeddy appears at Jake and Felice's lodgings to apologize and shake hands with Jake, assuring him no one will report his desertion.

While Jake's main pursuit is finding Felice, the texture of his life in Harlem is shaped by a cast of vivid secondary characters and the institutions they inhabit. From the cabarets of Lenox Avenue to the rowdy flat parties of Brooklyn, Jake moves through an underworld defined by loan sharks, kept men, cabaret singers, and vice raids. Zeddy's humiliating stint as Ginhead Susy's kept man and the spectacular collapse of Madame Suarez's buffet flat under a Vice Squad raid show the precariousness of life in Harlem's gray economy. Jake's illness strips away the romance of his wandering life, and during his recovery, quiet visits from Ray's girlfriend Agatha hint at the domestic stability Jake secretly craves. As Ray prepares to ship out, a farewell feast at Aunt Hattie's marks the end of their railroad chapter, while spring violence on the street and a reconciliation with Zeddy bracket the final push toward Chicago.

The people, places, and hustles that fill Harlem's underworld.

An Englishman in Havre tells Jake his ship is short a hand, giving Jake the opening to desert and sail to London.

Zeddy warns Jake that the government is actively hunting deserters and urges him to keep his military absence completely secret.

A brawl erupts at the Baltimore cabaret on Jake's second night in Harlem, prompting the owner to shut the club permanently.

Jake wanders a transformed postwar Harlem and notices it has grown bigger, noisier, and more crowded than the city he left.

Jake overhears Rose boasting to a friend that his slaps proved he was a real man, deepening his contempt for her.

Jake furiously confronts Zeddy for sending him into a dockside job without revealing it was a strikebreaking position.

Susy catches Zeddy socializing with another woman at the Congo and throws his belongings out with a note telling him to stay away.

Ray tells Jake the revolutionary history of Haiti and the story of Toussaint Louverture, broadening Jake's sense of black identity.

Overwhelmed by despair in Pittsburgh's sleeping quarters, Ray secretly takes all of Jake's cocaine packets and has a vivid ecstatic vision.

The headwaiter hides the chef's eggs while the chef flirts outside, triggering the chef's explosive outburst and demotion to second cook.

Ray tells Jake and James Grant the story of Jerco's devoted care for Rosalind and his suicide after her death.

Ray decides he cannot stay with Agatha without surrendering his freedom and resolves to ship out on a Pacific freighter.

Billy Biasse presses a gun on Jake, insisting that walking unarmed through Harlem after witnessing street violence is dangerously naïve.

Felice tells Jake she was never truly a sex worker and admits she was involved with Zeddy after their first encounter.

Felice retrieves her grandmother's lucky blue bead from Zeddy's old lodgings, then walks with Jake toward the Lenox Avenue subway and Chicago.

Beneath the surface of Jake's Harlem adventures runs a series of pivotal moments that quietly redirect every character's fate. A chance conversation with an Englishman is what truly sets Jake's desertion in motion, while Zeddy's early warning about draft hunters plants the seed of danger that eventually blooms into the novel's violent climax. Ray's overdose in Pittsburgh is both a crisis of the body and a crisis of the mind, revealing how cruelly the world presses on a sensitive black intellectual. The chef's demotion and Ray's story of Jerco and Rosalind each offer McKay's argument that beneath respectability lies something rotten, while beneath apparent depravity lies something genuine. Spring in Harlem brings the revelation of Felice's name and her complicated past with Zeddy, exposing the romantic idealization Jake has carried all along. The novel closes on a note of wary hope, as Felice retrieves her grandmother's lucky charm and the couple turns toward Chicago and an uncertain future.