Life with Logan her first husband was not good because she married him thanks to her grandmother, who forced her to do so. She did not love him and besides that, Logan did not treat her good. She prayed for the end of this relationship. Latter she met Joe, and she thought that he was the man of her dreams, and the type of romance that she was looking for.
One day when Janie and Logan were arguing really bad, Logan threatened her with an ax and he told her that he will kill her. She ran out of the house with Joe, and that afternoon before the sundown she married Joe. They moved to a town where there were a lot of black people. Joe bought land and then he sold it to black people that were moving to the town, he set a store also. After the years went by he became the major of the city. For Janie life was not easy with Joe either. He treated her as an ornament. He was so interested in becoming somebody important in the community that he did not pay attention to Janie, and eventually he became aggressive. Before he died Janie told him that the problem in their marriage was that he did not listen to her. When he died Janie acted like she was sad, but inside her heart she was happy.
One evening Janie met a guy named Tea Cake in the store, they played and flirted for a little bit, and that was the beginning of a new relationship. Compared to the relationship between Janie and Joe, the relationship between Tea Cake and Janie progressed slowly and playfully. The people in the town criticized her relationship because for them it was too soon for Janie to meet another person. Phoeby, Janie's best friend shared all the secrets of the relationship, and sometimes Phoeby wondered how her friend Janie had such a big change because she did a lot of things with Tea Cake that she did not do before.
Tea Cake was a new world for Janie. He took her to places that her Phoeby latter described as "places where she [Janie] had never been". At this point Janie was so tired of not living the life she wanted. Janie often described her life as her "Grandma's way to live". She decided to sell the store and move out of town.
Janie and Tea Cake got together. It is interesting to see that their relationship as a couple was not easy either, but this time things were different because Janie loved him. They overcame a lot of bad situations such as when Tea Cake took all the money from Janie and spent it with his friends. He latter on recovered the money by gambling, even though they had to move out of town because some people were mad against Tea Cake. Latter Tea Cake had an affair with a woman named Nunkie. Janie even forgave Tea Cake for beating her up because he wanted to show Mr. Turner's brother that he had control over Janie. Then in the stormy night Tea Cake get rabies from a dog that bit him on the face. This caused Tea Cake to become quite bit insane, that he even shot Janie with a pistol. Janie shot him with a rifle and she killed Tea Cake. She explained her cause to the court and she got free from all charges. She prepared a nice funeral for Tea Cake and then she returned to her old town, and she shared her story with Phoeby. The book ends describing how happy Janie felt at that time about how she had lived her life.