Set before the Holocaust in the tiny Polish shtetl of Proszowice, each interconnected story follows the young protagonist through the pleasures and humiliations of childhood and rites of manhood, as he fights against historical, social and psychological forces that threaten to pull him down.

Melvin Jules Bukiet teaches writing at Sarah Lawrence College. He is the author of Strange Fire, Signs and Wonders, After, and While the Messiah Tarries and editor of Nothing Makes You Free: Writings by Descendants of Jewish Holocaust Survivors.