A teenage girl’s coming-of-age in the Midwest in the 1940s, centering on her relationship with her father and grandfather. About it, Tillie Olsen wrote, “Wondrous, a true American classic . . . the timeless magic which is art.” The Dead of the House is a novel that has, in the years since it was first published, solidified itself as American canon. This is the first and only novel published by Hannah Green, who died in 1996. She spent nearly two decades writing the book.