It follows the narrator, Reuven Malter, and his friend Daniel Saunders, as they grow up in the Williamsburg neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York, in the 1940s.

[1][2][3] In 1944 Brooklyn, fifteen-year-old Reuven Malter prepares to play a baseball game: his own Modern Orthodox school against a team from an ultra-orthodox Hasidic yeshiva.

Reuven learns that Danny possesses a photographic memory, enabling him to study an astonishing amount of Talmud per day (set by his father), yet still leaving him time to pursue other subjects.

Danny knows that he is expected to someday take over his father's position as the rabbi for his community, but wishes he did not have to and that instead, he could pursue psychology.

He adds that he knows he cannot prevent Danny from pursuing knowledge, but that he fears his son will lose his Orthodox faith.

The coming year is dominated by the Allied victory in World War Two, and the death of Franklin Roosevelt, which brings grief to the Malters.

In addition, news of the Holocaust reaches American soil, which sends all the characters, especially Rabbi Saunders, into a state of depression.

Instead, he will apply to graduate school and pursue a doctorate in clinical psychology, and his younger brother, Levi, will assume the tzaddikate.

He also relates Danny to his older brother, who ran away from his homeland in Russia, became a secular professor and was murdered in Auschwitz.

Brilliant with a photographic memory, he is interested in psychology (particularly Freudian psychoanalysis) but is lacking in aptitude for mathematics.

He wants to become a psychologist, but he feels trapped by the Hasidic tradition which forces him into the role as next in line to succeed his father as Rabbi and tzaddik.

David Malter (Reuven's father): a Talmudic scholar, writer, schoolteacher at his son's yeshiva, motivational speaker on acts of Zionism and a Zionist himself.

Literary themes within the book include widespread references to senses (especially sight), the pursuit of truth in a gray world, the strength of friendship, and the importance of father-son bonds.

Many themes common to Potok's works prevail such as weak women and children, strong father figures, intellectual characters, and the strength and validity of faith in a modern secular world.

Throughout the book, there are numerous instances where Danny and Reuven both receive and process information in a non-verbal form.

Potok explicitly introduces this topic by alluding to the relationship between Danny and his father, where there is no verbal communication between them, except during religious study.

The book was adapted into a stage play by Potok and Aaron Posner and premiered at the Arden Theater in 1999.