Description
"A sometimes astonishing, worm's-eye view of life under totalitarianism, and a valuable contribution to Soviet and Jewish studies." -- KirkusReviews In 1931, Mary M. Leder, an American teenager, wasattending high school in Santa Monica, California. By year's end, she was living ina Moscow commune and working in a factory, thousands of miles from her family, withwhom she had emigrated to Birobidzhan, the area designated by the USSR as a Jewishsocialist homeland. Although her parents soon returned to America, Mary was notpermitted to leave and would spend the next 34 years in the Soviet Union. Readerswill be drawn into this personal account of the life of an independent-minded youngwoman, coming of age in a society that she believed was on the verge of achievingjustice for all but which ultimately led her to disappointment and disillusionment.Leder's absorbing memoir presents a microcosm of Soviet history and an extraordinarywindow into everyday life and culture in the Stalin era.
