The Vanishing Half is not the first tale about a Black person's passing for white, but author Brit Bennett gives it a different twist: Stella, who's passing, has an identical twin sister, Desiree.
The twins grew up in fictional Mallard, Louisiana, a town founded by their great-great-great-grandfather for light-skinned Blacks. They ran away to New Orleans at 16. Desiree marries a dark-skinned man and has a "blueblack" daughter. Stella, her past unknown, gets a secretarial job in a corporation and marries her white boss. They move to Los Angeles and have a blond daughter.
Desiree returns to Mallard with her daughter to escape her abusive husband. She and her mother do not know the whereabouts of Stella, who is hiding her ancestry from her husband, daughter, and everyone else in her high-society environment.
The secret is threatened by the daughters' coincidentally meeting as young adults. For the rest of the novel, Stella grows increasingly desperate to hide her past. It is the most interesting part of the book, posing questions about what it means to be Black when you look white, live in white society, and are perceived as white by everyone around you.
Other characters, including a transgender man and a drag queen, reinforce the theme of identity.
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