When I was a teenag­er, a com­i­cal song we used to sing was ​“I’m My Own Grand­ma.” In this book the author pre­tends to be ​“her own grand­ma” but the sto­ry isn’t fun­ny. She assumes the per­son of her grand­moth­er and tells her sto­ries, which were orig­i­nal­ly relat­ed in Yid­dish to the author’s father and, years lat­er, trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish. From its ini­tial descrip­tion of a sim­ple and hap­py life in their lit­tle Russ­ian vil­lage, it morphs into a saga of cru­el­ty per­pe­trat­ed on a pro­duc­tive, inno­cent peo­ple. The Jews of Rus­sia were forced by the Empress, Cather­ine the Great, to reside with­in the ​“Russ­ian Pale.” They lived a mod­est and often poor life, but it was a life. Before long, waves of polit­i­cal unrest swept Rus­sia, and the author, who has tak­en on the per­son­al­i­ty of her grand­moth­er, makes this his­to­ry her own. The sto­ry she weaves is one of war, pogroms, famine, dis­ease — of being hap­less vic­tims to polit­i­cal wars and reli­gious hatred, per­se­cut­ed by suc­ceed­ing Russ­ian polit­i­cal groups. It is also a sto­ry of love, of sim­ple plea­sures, of cus­toms, and fam­i­ly. It seduces the read­er into being one of the char­ac­ters in the book, not a pas­sive read­er, and before long the read­er wor­ries and hopes and prays just like the rest of the fam­i­ly and gives thanks when they reach the safe­ty of Canada.