A Sky Full of Song
After marauding Cossacks in the Russian Empire leave her mother with a head injury, eleven-year-old Shoshana, called “Shoshi,” and her Jewish family take a ship to the United States to be reunited with her father and brother, who immigrated several years earlier. Papa and Anshel are now homesteaders on the North Dakota prairie, living in a rodent-infested dugout which Shoshi, her mother, and her other siblings are now trying to make into a home (with the help of a cat she rescues on the way). Enrolled in school where they are the only Jewish students, Shoshi quickly learns English and makes a Christian friend who teaches her the dominant holidays and customs. But older sister Libke struggles to fit in, causing a rift between the two sisters who were always so close. The antisemitic brother of a classroom rival further tests their bond with his violent behavior, so similar to the Cossacks whom the family fled, until a blizzard shows all of them the importance of forgiveness and working together.
Gorgeous, immersive prose captures the closeness of the family’s village, the ever-present threats of violence, and the vastness of the Great Plains. The tension between those who want to preserve their customs and those who want to assimilate as soon as possible is a common theme in Jewish immigration stories, one that Meyer makes fresh and tangible through her focus on a little-known experience and her weaving of music into the story. While Shoshi tries to fit in, she also remembers the old country, and her father’s violin is her way of expressing what she has left behind as well as what she has gained in freedom, opportunity, and confidence.
