Highly praised when first published in 1960 (Kirkus Reviews called it "distinguished"), Anna Teller portrays the sage of a Jewsih-Hungarian family through three quarters of a century in Europe and the United States. We see 74-year-old Anna, known to her family as "the General", first running a farm and a mill after her husband's death, then helping to keep another woman alive during the worst of the Nazi occupation, and later as an elderly woman fighting the Russians during the failed Hungarian revolt of 1956.

The core of the novel lies in Anna's stormy relationship with her son and his American family, fueled by mutual guilt at the death of relatives in the concentration camps. Anna's adjustment to the baffling mores of a new country, as well as the final making peace with her family, give the novel a powerful emotional resonance shared by the best of family sagas.