Set in rural Hungary four years after The Good Master, it continues the story of Kate and Jancsi, showing the effect of World War I on the people and land.

Jancsi Nagy, now called the "Young Master", is becoming a fine horseman and his father, Kate's Uncle Márton, has given him his own herd.

Soon all the men between twenty-two and thirty are ordered to report for duty, and the little town has its first war casualty, young Rabbi Joseph Mandelbaum.

A chance stop at a hospital on the way home has the girls visiting the patients, including one amnesiac suffering from shell shock.

Finally the doctors decide even brave Uncle Márton's mind can only take so much horror, and they tell the family they will not be sending him back to the fighting.

The fourth Christmas of the war there are twenty people in the house, Hungarian, German and Russian, eating, exchanging presents and telling stories.

That spring Uncle Márton tells them the about the singing tree—an apple tree the men spotted one morning when all around them was barren and dead.

[4] More recently, children's literature expert Anita Silvey singled out the book's "strong and moving narrative".

"The Singing Tree, like The Good Master, is a memorable tale for children to learn from by evoking powerful ideas of love and friendship through its text...

[5] She suffered physically and emotionally from the effects of nursing on the front during World War I, and she drew on her experience in several of her books, including the Singing Tree.

[7] While the farm becomes a place of refuge for people from both sides of the conflict, leaving it to join the fighting almost destroys Uncle Marton.