In April 1911, Jews escaping pogroms are fleeing to America, but 20-year-old Anna Reader, full of fierce conviction, is headed in the opposite direction-back to the Ukrainian shtetl from which her family fled six years earlier. She has decided to join her radical cousin Chava in the Jewish Labor Bund on the eve of the Russian Revolution, leaving behind her work in a Chicago sweatshop and the lover who jilted her.

Her warm reunion with her cousin is tainted by political intrigue. Anna is not fully trusted by the Jewish radicals she grew up with in Ukraine. She is given minor tasks, while Chava's assignments become more dangerous. The threat of betrayal is constantly lurking. When Chava is arrested and imprisoned, Anna's efforts to rescue her cousin further alienate her from her Bund comrades. When she is threatened with arrest by the Tsarists, Anna is undone, fighting for survival in a strife-torn land.

Elaine Elinson is co-author of the award-winning Wherever There's a Fight and Development Debacle, which was banned by the Marcos dictatorship. Named a San Francisco Public Library Laureate, her work has been published widely, including in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Kirkus, San Francisco Chronicle, Ms. and the Jewish Book Council. Elinson served two decades as the communications director of the ACLU of Northern California and editor of the ACLU News. She speaks Russian and sings in Yiddish. She lives in San Francisco and this is her debut novel.