From one of the greatest literary forces of our time, an intensely realized, masterful epic of a young woman's struggle for identity and survival in post - World War II America. In 1936 the schwarts, an immigrant family ...From one of the greatest literary forces of our time, an intensely realized, masterful epic of a young woman's struggle for identity and survival in post - World War II America. In 1936 the schwarts, an immigrant family desperate to escape nazi Germany, settle in a small town in upstate New York, where the father, a former high school teacher, is demeaned by the only job he can get: gravedigger and cemetery caretaker.