Although this is a novel, and the number of pages – 540  – rather daunting, this is a book you will never forget.  The fact that it took ten years to write is not surprising, as the research is impeccable.  You are taken on a non-stop journey beginning in the Russian shtetl Krevietsky in 1910; to a Siberian labor camp and on to the Lower East Side of New York.  You also journey to Buenos Aires and finally Eretz Israel under both Ottoman amd British rule.

The heroine is Faigel Friedman and her challenges, hopes and fears carry you breathlessly through the book until – at times, as your heart breaks – you feel yourself experiencing all her emotions yourself.  You empathise at the terrible decisions she has to make – how do you decide between two of your children? The loss of her beloved husband Chatzkel, whom she believes killed by the Cossacks. A lifetime of searching, with so little hope in her heart.
      This is a book that will stay with you, long after the last page is closed.  The author’s knowledge of Yiddishkeit is impressive, and you will feel how the love of G-d can empower a Jew even through the darkest hours of our tragic history.  I recommend this remarkable book without hesitation, and found it truly inspiring!

“If you want a historical novel that is accurate, fast-moving, covers the world and is gripping, this is it. This is a seriously addictive book. It is one of the best historical fiction I have ever read. The protagonists’ trials were not contrived or tedious or fanciful. The dilemmas they faced were real dilemmas that were faced by millions in the harrowing years that the book took place (1910-1920). One very specific trial of those times — the struggle to retain one’s commitment to Judaism in the face of mass abandonment — is a thread running through the book. A fascinating aspect of the book is that it uniquely covers many continents and venues and gives one a sensation of the ferment and mass migration of Jews occurring in the world in that period. The author did a good job of researching her time period (1910-1920). The ubiquitous pogroms facing Jews under the Czar, brigands attacking Jews living in the Jewish colonies in Argentina, the Jews’ dilemma of whether to prefer Turkish or British rule in Palestine and the brutal rejections in Ellis Island made the historical facts come alive. I found myself feeling anxious about the fate of this ill-fated family as it hurled up on one wave and dashed down on another.”