One of the most heart-breaking of all World War I novels, this family epic was written in the midst of the War itself, and shows the intense emotion generated in ordinary lives by that tragedy. May Sinclair astonishingly weaves multiple themes into her narrative, seamlessly drawing from the great movements of her day: suffrage, sexual liberation, artistic revolt, war, and pacifism. Her most powerful metaphor throughout the novel is that of the Vortex: the dangerously irresistible force of human masses, how to resist it and (much more difficult) how to participate in it without losing one’s individual autonomy. - Summary by Expatriate