This heart­warm­ing, beau­ti­ful­ly writ­ten mid­dle-grade his­tor­i­cal nov­el about an untold Amer­i­can fron­tier sto­ry is des­tined to be a cher­ished classic.

North Dako­ta, 1905.

After flee­ing per­se­cu­tion in the Russ­ian Empire, eleven-year-old Shoshana and her fam­i­ly, Jew­ish immi­grants, start a new life on the prairie. Shoshana takes joy in the wild beau­ty of the plains and the thrill of forg­ing a new, Amer­i­can iden­ti­ty. But it’s not as sim­ple for her old­er sis­ter, Libke, who miss­es their Ukrain­ian vil­lage and does­n’t pick up Eng­lish as quick­ly. Des­per­ate to fit in, Shoshana finds her­self hid­ing her Jew­ish iden­ti­ty in the face of prej­u­dice, just as Libke insists they pre­serve it.

For the first time, Shoshana is at odds with her beloved sis­ter and has to look deep inside her­self to real­ize that her fam­i­ly’s dif­fer­ence is their great­est strength. By lis­ten­ing to the music that’s lived in her heart all along, Shoshana finds new mean­ing in the Jew­ish expres­sion that all begin­nings are difficult.