Kishinev
Survival
A childhood of family, work, music, and shared meals ends in violence. Minnie escapes the massacre, then begins a fifteen-hundred-mile journey west.
Fiction rooted in family memory
The memories that remained became the story.
In 1903, the Newman family’s secure life near Kishinev is shattered by a pogrom. Fourteen-year-old Minnie survives by hiding in a woodpile. Nine months later, the family leaves Moldovia with whatever it can carry.
An eye infection strands Minnie in London while her family sails to America. At sixteen, she learns a new language, supports herself with the sewing and baking skills her mother taught her, and falls in love with Jacob Levy. But family, duty, and a promise to Ben Janofsky await across the Atlantic.
In Philadelphia, Minnie becomes Honey: wife, mother of four daughters, pastry chef, shopkeeper, and the center of a family that answers loss with music, dancing, laughter, and an enduring talent for beginning again.