When the River Ice Flows, I Will Come Home : A Memoir / Elisa Miller.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Miller, Elisa, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Jewish women--United States--Biography.

Jewish women.

Families.

Miller, Elisa Brodinsky--Family.

Miller, Elisa Brodinsky.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (200 pages)

Place of Publication:

Boston, MA : Academic Studies Press, [2020]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

After years of leaving her husband and children behind in Seattle as she traveled back and forth to Russia pursuing a career, Elisa Brodinsky Miller discovers she's writing her own chapter in a book of three generations. Shortly after her father's death, Elisa discovers a cache of letters written in Russian and Yiddish among his belongings, which she quickly resolves to translate. Dated from 1914 to 1922 and addressed to her grandfather, Eli, in Wilmington, Delaware, the letters capture the eight long years that Eli spent apart from his wife and their six children who remained behind in the Pale of Settlement. With each translation, Brodinsky Miller learns more about this time spent apart, the family she knew so little about, and the country they came to leave behind, connecting her own experiences with those who came before her. This captivating memoir bridges the past with the present, as we learn about her grandparents' drives to escape the Jewish worlds of Tsarist Russia, her immigrant parents' hopes for their marriage in America, and now her turn to reach for meaning and purpose: each a generation of aspirations-first theirs, now hers.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Maps

Foreword

1. A Cache of Letters

2. Gone to America

3. War Disrupts

4. Inflation Spirals

5. Scythe against Stone

6. Wrapping Tefillin

7. Eli Sends Money

8. Making Ends Meet

9. My Parents Separate, Reconcile, Divorce

10. Meer Joins the Red Army

11. My Marriage and My Divorce

12. Reindeer in the Arctic Circle

13. Taiga, Tundra, Gulag

14. Papa, Come Home!

15. Jewish Passion, Jewish Suffering

16. A Terrible Night

17. It Is My Turn Now to Try

18. The Soul Suffers

19. Ragamuffins, Barefoot, and Hungry

20. When the River Ice Flows

21. Waiting to Leave

22. The Moloch of Ambition

23. In Riga, at Last

24. Olga

25. Al Anon

26. A Plot in the Jewish Section

Afterword

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Sources

Appendix 1. My Father's Travel Notes

Appendix 2. Understanding the Russian Pale

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 06. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

1-64469-281-3

OCLC:

1123181853