A young girl’s dream of escaping the circumstances of her birth and lineage takes form in this new literary voice.

There are a lot of things 5-year-old Yanina Lishanski doesn’t understand. She doesn’t understand why she only sees her family in old photographs, or why she must never talk about her parents’ life in Germany before 1950. She doesn’t understand why the neighborhood children mock her accent, or why she has to go to sleep hungry each night.

But Yanina also understands many things. Like how she always wants more out of life. More from her education, more from her emotionally abusive mother and her violent father. More from her friends and loved ones.

Encapsulating the immigrant experience of the 1950s through the eyes of a child born to a world she will forever be a stranger to, Yanina’s complex relationships with her family, her sister, and her childhood romances all pose a fascinating question. How much are we really slaves to our upbringing, and the circumstances into which we’re born? Can Yanina escape her fate, and become something more? Or will she be forever haunted by the words of her mother, “One day you’ll thank me for this”?