Likewise, in her youth the author's wife Adena was also, like Ilana Davita, denied an academic prize due to her gender.

[1] In New York City of the 1930s, Ilana Davita Chandal is the child of a mixed marriage: a Polish Jewish immigrant mother and a Christian father from an old and wealthy New England family.

Both of her parents are haunted by bitter and violent memories from their youths, and both have, in consequence, turned their backs on their pasts in order to become active members of the Communist Party.

When Michael Chandal, already wounded once in the Spanish Civil War, returns to Spain, Ilana begins to look for answers at the local synagogue and in friendship with observant Jews, including her neighbor Ruthie Helfman and her distant cousin, David Dinn.

They are often at odds with each other as Ilana becomes more and more interested in traditional Judaism—even asserting her right to say kaddish for her non-Jewish father—while Anne Chandal devotes herself to the Party and becomes involved in a new relationship with a young Communist historian, Charles Carter.

When Stalin signs a non-aggression pact with Hitler, Anne struggles with reconciling the communist cause with the geopolitical reality and leaves the Party.

She is devastated when she is unjustly denied an academic award on account of her gender, but she remains determined to make her mark on the world.

Avid reader who loves to use her imagination, later in the book becomes a great writer and semi-religious daughter of Anne and Michael Chandal.

So, for example, Michael Chandal's experiences at Centralia change his life course and inspire him to become a Communist; Michael is killed while reporting on the Spanish Civil War, sending his wife and daughter into a tailspin; and Stalin's pact with Hitler ends Anne Chandal and Charles Carter's romance.

With regards to plot, biographer Edward A. Abramson felt that as with his other novels, Potok's tendency to forego emphasis of a book's dramatic moments continues here, leading to a "flattening effect".

An unnamed reviewer in Booklist wrote, "Ilana's perceptions of the harsh world of her parents is a stunning one, especially as balanced against the yearnings and disappointments of her own life"[9] while Marcia R. Hoffman (reviewing for Library Journal) wrote, "Potok's insight into the mind and heart of an adolescent girl...will not be quickly forgotten".