Set in 1911 in a boarding house in Pittsburgh, Joe Turner's Come and Gone deals with a time in American history when the sons and daughters of recently freed slaves journeyed to the booming industrial cities of the North in search of prosperity, a new way of life, and, essentially, their own identities.

The play is part of August Wilson's Century Cycle, his epic dramatization of the African American experience in the twentieth century.

This edition includes a foreword by Romulus Linney.