On Bit­ter­sweet Place is the pow­er­ful com­ing-of-age sto­ry of Lena Czer­nit­s­ki, a young Russ­ian Jew whose fam­i­ly flees their home­land in the Ukraine after the Octo­ber Rev­o­lu­tion. The sto­ry unfolds in Chica­go dur­ing the Jazz Age of the 1920s, where Lena’s impov­er­ished fam­i­ly has set­tled and where she must tra­verse the ear­ly years of ado­les­cence. Lena’s new world is large and beau­ti­ful and full of promise, but it is also cold and unwel­com­ing and laden with dan­ger and prej­u­dice. Ron­na Wineberg deliv­ers a mov­ing, uni­ver­sal sto­ry of fam­i­ly, self-dis­cov­ery, and the always rel­e­vant expe­ri­ence of the Jew­ish immi­grant, the refugee, the out­sider strug­gling to cre­ate a new home and a bet­ter life in an unfa­mil­iar place.