Hannah Green's only novel, The Dead of the House (1972), has been praised for its evocative language and lyrical prose. The novel originally appeared in the New Yorker as a series of shorter fictional pieces. It was published as a novel in 1971 to critical and commercial praise; when it was reprinted in 1996, the novel was discovered by a new generation of readers.

The novel is the story of a girl's passage from childhood through adolescence and into adulthood. Moreover, it is a much broader history of her entire family. The Dead of the House also paints a rich picture of an older American family and its place within the history of America. In addition, it hearkens back to the mythology of the American West.