This gripping book opens with a scene of a raid on Jewish village in Czarist Russia as local peasants unleash a torrent of violence against its occupants. The reader is thrust int the cruel world inhabited by Leah Peretz, the main protagonist, as she and her husband, Morris, struggle to protect their young children from the attackers. Morris is murdered and Leah must do everything she can to ensure that her children survive.
Leah’s heartrending personal story is set against the backdrop of life in Russia in the early 20th century, where tradition-bound communities in the Jewish Pale of Settlement start to unravel in the face of increasing poverty, ignorance and oppression. The threat from the local, rabidly anti-Semitic peasants is constant and there is a little or no protection…
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By Rebecca Jefferson, JewishLibraries.com