Ragtime recap

In early twentieth-century New York, a wealthy white family in New Rochelle, a Jewish immigrant family, and a Black pianist's family are drawn together amid rapid social change. Father leaves for an Arctic expedition while Mother grows more independent. Tateh escapes Lower East Side poverty and remakes himself as a filmmaker. Mother shelters Sarah and her baby; the child's father, Coalhouse Walker Jr., courts Sarah and joins the household's life. After racist firemen vandalize Coalhouse's car and officials deny him justice, Sarah is killed while seeking help and Coalhouse begins a violent campaign. Mother's Younger Brother joins him. Their occupation of the Morgan Library ends with Coalhouse releasing his followers and surrendering, only to be killed by police. Father later dies, Younger Brother is killed in Mexico, and Mother marries Tateh, uniting their children with Coalhouse and Sarah's son in a new family.

At the opening of the twentieth century, an affluent family lives in New Rochelle under Father's confident authority. Their ordered world briefly admits Harry Houdini when the famous escape artist's car breaks down outside their home. Houdini's celebrity cannot quiet his private fear of death. Elsewhere, Evelyn Nesbit becomes a national sensation through the murder trial of her husband, Harry K. Thaw, who killed architect Stanford White. Mother's Younger Brother fixates on Evelyn and follows reports of her life, looking for a larger purpose beyond his work in Father's fireworks factory. The novel moves between private households and public celebrities, presenting an America fascinated by wealth, machinery, scandal, and spectacle.

The New Rochelle family remains outwardly secure, but Mother's Younger Brother's obsession with Evelyn Nesbit exposes his loneliness. Evelyn encounters Tateh and his little girl, Jewish immigrants enduring poverty on the Lower East Side. Her attempt to help them brings her into contact with radical labor politics and Emma Goldman, who explains how wealth and celebrity obscure exploitation. Tateh struggles to support his family by making paper silhouettes and finally leaves New York with his daughter, seeking a place where they can live with dignity. Father prepares to join Robert Peary's Arctic expedition, taking the authority and assumptions of his household with him into an unfamiliar world. The book's separate social circles have begun to touch, though the privileges dividing them remain intact.

While Father is away with Peary, Mother proves able to run the family business and discovers that her husband had underestimated both her and the company. In the garden she finds an abandoned Black newborn and then learns that the child's mother, Sarah, works nearby. Rather than allow the authorities to separate them, Mother takes Sarah and the baby into her home. Sarah is traumatized and initially silent about the child's father. Father returns from the Arctic to find his household altered and Mother more self-reliant. He has difficulty recovering his former place within the family and recognizing that his absence allowed its relationships to change. The arrival of Sarah and her child has also brought people whom his old understanding of domestic order did not include under his roof.

Coalhouse patiently courts Sarah, wins her trust, and becomes a regular Sunday visitor whose music delights the household. Their reconciliation points toward marriage. On one journey, however, Willie Conklin and the men of a volunteer fire company block Coalhouse's Model T and vandalize it in a calculated racist humiliation. Coalhouse refuses to accept either the damage or the contempt behind it. Police and lawyers repeatedly deny him a remedy, while Father urges compromise and cannot understand the full meaning of Coalhouse's stand. Sarah tries to appeal to a visiting national official on Coalhouse's behalf but is beaten by guards and dies from her injuries. With lawful redress closed and Sarah gone, Coalhouse turns to retaliation. He demands that his car be restored and Conklin delivered to him, and he begins attacking firehouses. Mother's Younger Brother, radicalized and skilled with explosives, leaves the family to join Coalhouse.

Coalhouse's campaign becomes a national crisis as he and his followers continue their attacks. The New Rochelle family withdraws to Atlantic City, where the old household is breaking apart: Mother no longer accepts Father's authority, and the disappearance of her younger brother ties their private life to the violence. There they meet Tateh again. He has transformed the moving-picture ideas he once improvised for his daughter into a successful career and now presents himself as the Baron Ashkenazy. Mother and Tateh recognize in each other a practical concern for children and an ability to adapt. Coalhouse's group, meanwhile, occupies J. P. Morgan's library and threatens its collection, using the symbolic center of a powerful man's wealth to force public attention onto the injustice that began with one damaged car.

Police surround the Morgan Library while officials search for a way to end the occupation without destroying its treasures or causing more deaths. Father acts as an intermediary because of his connection to Mother's Younger Brother. Booker T. Washington is brought in to speak with Coalhouse. He condemns the violence but also recognizes the dignity and grievance that brought Coalhouse to this point. Coalhouse agrees to release the hostages and surrender if his followers are permitted to leave safely and if his original demands concerning the car and Willie Conklin are met. His men depart in the restored Model T, but Mother's Younger Brother slips away with them rather than returning home. Coalhouse then emerges unarmed and is immediately shot dead by the police, ending the siege without delivering him the justice he sought.

After Coalhouse's death, the lives that crossed during the crisis separate and recombine. Mother's Younger Brother follows revolutionary causes into Mexico and dies there. Father and Mother cannot restore their old marriage; Father later dies aboard the Lusitania during the First World War. Tateh's reinvention as the Baron Ashkenazy and a motion-picture producer gives him and his daughter lasting security. He and Mother marry, forming a household with her son and with Sarah and Coalhouse's orphaned boy. Their blended family replaces the insulated white household shown at the start. Around them, public figures also move on: Evelyn Nesbit's fame fades and Houdini continues pursuing feats that cannot finally defeat mortality. The novel closes on an America reshaped by immigration, racial conflict, new technology, popular entertainment, political radicalism, and war, with the surviving family adapting to a world Father could not preserve.

Coalhouse agrees to release his hostages and leave the Morgan Library after his followers are allowed to depart in his car and the authorities promise that his demands will be addressed. He walks out unarmed and is shot dead by the police. Mother's Younger Brother escapes and eventually joins revolutionary movements in Mexico, where he dies. Father survives the family crisis but dies aboard the Lusitania. Tateh, now successful in the motion-picture business as the self-styled Baron Ashkenazy, marries Mother. They bring their children and Sarah and Coalhouse's son into one household. The final family is therefore interracial and assembled by choice rather than by the rigid social pattern with which the novel opened. Evelyn Nesbit and Harry Houdini continue into new phases of public life, while the old New Rochelle order disappears amid war, migration, mass entertainment, and political upheaval.