The brilliant, schismatic Hasidic painter Asher Lev is now a middle-aged man, residing with his wife and children in the south of France.

Asher is dazzled and makes some tentative efforts to reconcile the Ladover Hasidic community to modern art—for example, by sketching a portrait of his uncle for his grieving father and by teaching a lesson in art appreciation at the school where his daughter has temporarily enrolled.

But one of his cousins bitterly resents the art collection and hampers Asher's efforts to use it for charity in his uncle's name.

Asher suspects Devorah will seize on her son's eventual succession to Rebbeship as some sort of vindication for her family's suffering.

The novel reflects the then-current debate within the Lubavitcher movement of Hasidim about the anticipated death and succession of their Rebbe, Menachem M. Schneerson.

The real-life group has not chosen a successor, while the novel reaches a possible solution to the problem in choosing the grandson of a major supporter.

As a small child, Devorah was hidden in a Paris apartment for two years in order to evade the Nazi concentration camps, in which both of her parents perished.

Aryeh Lev – Asher's father; works for the Rebbe traveling to Vienna and Russia to build yeshivas and save Jews from Communist persecution.