Orphaned at fif­teen, she wrote the sto­ry of her dif­fi­cult child­hood when she was still a teenag­er. She went on to become one of the most pop­u­lar Yid­dish writ­ers in East­ern Europe. This fic­tion­al­ized account of Rokhl Fey­gen­berg’s rough child­hood in a small Belaru­sian shtetl in the 1890s is framed by the deaths of her father when she was five and that of her moth­er when she was four­teen. Forced to pro­vide and care for her fam­i­ly, the nar­ra­tor finds escape through books and is inspired by them to invent an escapist fan­ta­sy life for her­self. Feygenberg’s sto­ry, at times fun­ny, at times full of pathos, is a clear-eyed and vivid descrip­tion of every­day shtetl life.