It is about Rachewiltz's childhood with a foster family in the Italian Tyrol and about her father, the American poet Ezra Pound.
Brad Darrach of Time called the book a "discreet but perceptive memoir" that delivered on the hope that Pound's friends and family would provide their perspectives on the man, whose literary accomplishment and status followed by his choices and Axis sympathies during World War II had puzzled the American establishment.
Darrach wrote that the book does not make sense of what was going on inside Pound's head, but through its scenes of family life it "helps explain his crusty heart".
He wrote that the book contains nothing about Pound's antisemitism, but gives glimpses of his monetary theories, and his idea that understanding "the nature of money" is a necessity for writing great poetry.
[2] In Modern Age, Henry Regnery called Discretions "a beautifully written, charming book which tells us much not only about the complex author of Indescretions, but because of her place of observation in the middle of it all, much about our time as well".