'It is 1907 in the Pale Settlement, which Magdalena Ball explains was a region of the Russian Empire from 1791 to 1917 where Jewish people were forced to live in poverty and suffered extreme abuse; there her great-grandmother dreamed of a better life. In this year, with a few bundles filled with old clothes as well as with ambition and hope, she left for the Americas and disembarked in New York.' (Introduction)