Summary

Based on the true story of Clara Lemlich, this novel follows Clara and her orthodox Jewish family through their immigration from Eastern Europe to America beginning in 1903. Clara lives with her mother, father, and three brothers Marcus, Nathan and Benjamin in a shtetl, a small Jewish village, in Russia. Clara describes herself as “small-boned and short, brown-haired and brown eyed…common as a wren, meek as a robin,” and describes her life as “ordinary, simple, small,” but Clara also recognizes the many things she would do, such as read and write and go to school, if the gender roles within her culture did not forbid it (5). Clara’s religious community values girls “trained in obedience, hard work, a biddable spirit; all the virtues a good wife needs” (14). While doing the repetitive domestic work of sweeping and dusting in her mother’s grocery store...