"Grandmother" is a highly romanticized autobiographical novel by a Czech 19th century writer, Bozena Nemcova. It's a classical, compulsory reading in Czech schools, about a wise, working-class woman, happier in her simplicity and good heart than the nobles whom she serves.
Woman concert star seeks to connect with her adult daughter, by her former marriage to a staid industrialist who has kept the two apart since the girl was very small, and receives inadvertent help from the industrialist's just-fired employee who has fallen in love with the girl.
The orphan Eliška Irovská, nicknamed Líza, arrives in her native village of Ptačice. As an orphan she is housed in the local poorhouse and has to go out begging. Her guardian Petr Tumlíř, however, sees that she is competent enough to go to school.
A dashing but mysterious man saves a gambler from suicide, crashes the posh party of a prominent industrialist, falls in love with his daughter, and finds himself in a web of intrigue revolving around her blackmailing fiance and a gang of counterfeiters.