A bestseller in its day, the novel explores the realities and risks of the urban 'whirl' taking place around the novel's main protagonist Dot and her life in 1920s Harlem. Delmar debates the question, in increasingly ironic terms, of what constitutes a 'bad girl' and in doing so presents a cautionary tale about attitudes to class, premarital sex, pregnancy and childbirth in 1920s New York. British Library Women Writers 1920s.