Sophie Trupin and I sprang from the same Eastern European Jewish roots. Her vividly personal recollections suggest that there are two million variations on Jewish flight to the United States between 1881 and 1924. Through the perplexed eyes and emotions of a Russian-Jewish girl, Trupin relives her family's flight from Old Country constraints -- Jewish and governmental -- to homesteading in alien and relatively empty North Dakota. The antagonism that erupts between her delicate and conventional mother and her vigorous, progressive father does not abate. Nor does the hard work for which rocky black soil denies them a livelihood. Sophie guides her reader indoors (with stories of Shabbos challah and candles on the table, and Yiddish -- cacophonous, accusative, tender) and outdoors (where blizzards, droughts, and insects destroy their crops). Finally, alternatives exhausted, they move to a small town, where her father runs a store, the family engages with Jewish and non-Jewish neighbors, and the children excel in public schools. As to whether her father's ill-fated romance with the land resulted in deeper and more rapid acculturation, we may only speculate. In retrospect, Trupin views his quest as a desperate effort to free them from an oppressive and outmoded past. Which by extreme measures he did.

recommended by Rachel Siegel