With compassion and humor and deep understanding Elizabeth Goudge once again turns her great talent toward the novel. In The Heart of the Family, Miss Goudge's first straight novel in three years, she writes engrossingly about the Eliot family, writes with truth and mysticism. Miss Goudge introduced the Eliots in The Bird in the Tree (1940) and wrote of them compellingly in Pilgrim's Inn (1948).

The story in The Heart of the Family is uncomplicated. Into the home of David Eliot comes Sebastian Weber, an Austrian refugee, once a world-famous pianist, now bitter and full of hatred for all mankind and all goodness. The story tells simply how Sebastian's hate is purged by his association with the large Eliot family and how the Eliots are made finer by the necessity to understand and succor Sebastian. The Eliot children and grandchildren and great grandchildren are in this book, and the dogs, and all the marvelously portrayed minor characters. Truly the heart of the family is given us in this beautiful story.

From the dust jacket of the American edition