"I can think of few novels . . . that have such romantic authority as The Chateau, fewer still so adult in vitality, so alight with humor." --Elizabeth Bowen

It is 1948 and a battered France is just beginning to receive its first American tourists since the war. Perhaps it is not ready for them. Or perhaps they are not ready for France.

For although Harold and Barbara Rhodes, a young American couple arriving for a holiday, are enchanted by the small perfections that greet them at the Chateau Beaumesnil and tolerant of the lack of such amenitites as sugar and hot water, there is much that bewilders them. Is their hostess, the gallant Mme Vienot, flirting with Harold? Will they ever win the approval of the impeccably connected M. Carriere and his forbidding wife? Can American eagerness and goodwill ever decipher the ancient codes of French civility? In a voice that is by turns rapturous and ironic, and with an eye that looks kindly on both the beautiful and the absurd, William Maxwell creates the most astute and affectionate portraayal of the meeting of two cultures since the masterworks of Henry James.