1919 Ukraine — In a small trunk in the cor­ner of an aban­doned shed, a young woman hud­dles hid­ing from the Cos­sacks rav­aging her shtetl, burn­ing homes, and killing Jews. Shay­na Rifkin, sev­en­teen, los­es every­thing. Des­per­ate to find safe­ty, she dreams of reach­ing Amer­i­ca. Shay­na res­cues her four-year-old nephew and with her fiancé and his moth­er braves a per­ilous trek across Europe. Shay­na’s courage and deter­mi­na­tion bind them togeth­er, weav­ing a strong fab­ric from their sep­a­rate threads to make a fam­i­ly, a safe place from which to build a new life in a new coun­try. This emo­tion­al­ly rich nov­el is steeped in the Yid­dish cul­ture of the shtetl and the Low­er East Side of New York in the ear­ly twen­ti­eth century.