"They were best friends. They were collaborators, literary gadflies, and champions of the common people. They were the leading lights of the Harlem Renaissance. Zora Neale Hurston, the author of Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Langston Hughes, the author of 'The Negro Speaks of Rivers' and 'Let America Be America Again, ' first met in 1925, at a great gathering of black and white literati, and they fascinated each other. They traveled together in Hurston's dilapidated car through the rural South collecting folklore, worked on the play Mule Bone, and wrote scores of loving letters. They even had the same patron: Charlotte Osgood Mason, a wealthy white woman who insisted on being called 'Godmother.' Paying them lavishly while trying to control their work, Mason may have been the spark for their bitter and passionate falling-out. Was the split inevitable when Hughes decided to be financially independent of his patron? Was Hurston jealous of the young woman employed as their typist? Or was the rupture over the authorship of Mule Bone? Yuval Taylor answers these questions while illuminating Hurston's and Hughes's lives, work, competitiveness, and ambition, uncovering little-known details. [This book] is the dramatic and moving story of one of the most influential friendships in literature."--Jacket.;They were best friends, collaborators, and champions of the common people; the leading lights of the Harlem Renaissance. Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes first met in 1925, and traveled together in Hurston's dilapidated car through the rural South collecting folklore, worked on the play Mule Bone, and wrote scores of loving letters. Their patron, Charlotte Osgood Mason, was a wealthy white woman who paid them lavishly while trying to control their work. Taylor illuminates Hurston's and Hughes's lives, work, competitiveness, and ambition, uncovering little-known details while searching for the reasons behind their bitter and passionate falling-out. -- adapted from jacket;Introduction: Lovingly yours -- Spring 1925 : opportunity -- 1891/1924 : I laugh, and grow strong -- Summer 1926 : the Niggerati -- Spring 1927 : enter Godmother -- Summer 1927 : the company of good things -- Fall 1927 : a deep well of the spirit -- Winter 1928/winter 1930 : this is going to be big -- Spring 1930 : the bone of contention -- Winter 1931 : a miasma of untruth -- 1932/1960 : the aftermath -- Conclusion: The legacy.