Shayna

Book excerpt: Escaping religious persecution after a pogrom against Jews in Ukraine in 1919, Shayna, a seventeen-year-old, along with her orphaned four-year-old nephew, her fiancé and his mother begin a treacherous journey to reach safety in America.The novel portrays the Yiddish culture of the shtetl and New York's Lower East side as the reader comes to know little Dovid, who lives with the trauma of losing his family; Yussi, who believes God has forsaken him in this new country; and his mother, Manya, who struggles to find a way to fit in America.Shayna's courage and determination hold them together and weaves a rich fabric from their separate threads to make a loving family, a safe place from which to build a new life in a new country.