Lilli is one of fourteen Goldblooms, all living in a tiny apartment in Kiev. She's as normal a child as she can be, a Jewish girl living under the oppressive Soviet Union with a father who makes illegal leather goods to pay for the treatments that ultimately fail to save her mother from cancer. Lilli comes of age with the weight of her circumstances on her shoulders, working meager jobs to support herself and her family and eventually turning to alcohol to numb her while she waits for life to pass her by. But when she meets Sergey Kaplan, she feels the first glimmer of hope for a meaningful and fulfilling life-if she can manage to emerge from the shadows of her past.
In this honest and touching novel, Lydia Cutler explores a Jewish woman's coming-of-age under the Communist Soviet Union, the psychological effects of losing a parent, immigration, and how our futures don't have to be determined by our pasts.
