The book's title, Looking for Jazz, refers to the author's naive assumption that her favorite kind of music will be readily availble at a black college in the south. The book tells the story of Anna, a young white midwestern woman who takes a job teaching at a black college in a small Georgia town in 1968. Her husband is beginning his advanced Army training at Fort Benning. The Vietnam War, voter registration of blacks, forced public school integration, and students' beginning to vote where they attend college provide the political context. Anna enjoys teaching her students as she learns the culture of the region and the college. After four years, her first marriage ends. She begins life with a black Vietnam veteran from the town and they go away to school in Ohio. Anna returns to her job at the college three years later, and the couple remains in the South where they will raise their two sons.