Daisy depicts the inner struggle of a young man who forsakes the bohemian world of Greenwich Village to seek his American ideal in the person of a chorus girl. Set in the 1920s, a vital period in Wilson's life, the novel is crowded with recognizable characters drawn from his contemporaries, particularly his colleague John Dos Passos and his lover Edna St. Vincent Millay.

The preface and afterword by Neale Reinitz, editor of Edmund Wilson's posthumously published novel The Higher Jazz (Iowa, 1998), set the novel in the context of Wilson's development as a writer of fiction.