This is a love story of great beauty and great tenderness, the kind of love story that entangles the listener in the lives of the characters, so that after the story is over, one continues to live with those characters. And fortunately, the listener will not have to say farewell to these characters, since it is the first in a series that will tell the story of three Californian families over the course of the 20th century.

Howard Fast, author of The Immigrants, has proven himself to be one of this country's most popular authors. This second volume about the fortunes of Dan Lavette, the young Italian who lost his parents but launched a stormy and brilliant career as a result of the great San Francisco earthquake, encompasses an even more dramatic sweep of history from the depression years to the close of World War II.

In The Establishment, Howard Fast pulls the listener into the turbulent and passionate lives of the Dan Lavette family story begun in The Immigrants and continued in Second Generation.

This fourth-in-series story takes place during the turbulent 1960's as Barbara Lavette and her family are embroiled in the issues of that decade: Civil Rights, Israel's Six-Day War, the Nixon years, Vietnam, and riots in the street. Barbara Lavette develops into a powerful, strong willed, capable person.

After a life filled with danger, love and death, Barbara, now in her sixties, is living a simple life in San Francisco. And then, almost on a whim, she runs for Congress and sets in motion a series of adventures that brings her back to the excitement of the times, to a renewal of romantic love, to mortal danger as a reporter in Central America, to loss and tragedy, and in the end, to an exultant embracing of life.

In this unforgettable final chapter of the Immigrants series, Howard Fast follows the trials and joys of the wealthy Lavette matriarch, Barbara, whose life has been a selfless journey powered by an unshakable faith in the human spirit. Barbara now discovers the unexpected delights of finding love in her later years, even as she encounters the most daunting obstacle of her life.