With the sweeping magnitude of an epic, and the sensitivity and insight of a deeply personal tale, Nomi Eve recreates a time that is as mythical as it is real -- the years between 1820 and the present in the life of a family readers will fall in love with. Eve traces their evolution -- from a long line of judicious rabbis to immigrants and orchard keepers, lovers and revolutionaries and ghosts and thieves -- in language that shimmers with sensuality, that mirrors the exuberance and lustiness of the people who inhabit it, and reflects the storyteller's own love of the tale.

Here are characters elevated to the level of legend: the Schines of Jerusalem, the Sephers of Petach Tikvah ("six hours from the holy city if you take the fast donkey, eight if you take the slow...") -- the story of Esther, who was lured by the smell of baking bread into the baker's arms; of Eliezer, who ran with his grandsons atop the ancient walls of the old city; of Chasia, the woman who fell asleep but never died; the story of how Avra Schine, a born thief, came to marry Shimon, a man from Southern Russia with strong fists and very fast feet. And here, within these stories, within the novel's beautifully alternating voices of father and daughter, is the story of the author herself, of the history she inherited -- of treasured fables, long hidden secrets, and enduring love.