My father gave me this book, a translated (from Yiddish) autobiography and supporting essays about a turn-of-the-century Jewish farm wife, saying that it was one of the best books he ever read. It didn't quite touch me in the same way it did my father, who has more sentiment for his immigrant parents than I do for the immigrant grandparents I never knew, though of course our family was urban, located in Newark, NJ.
That's not to say I didn't like it. The value of this tale is in its straightforward historical narrative of Rachel Bella Calof's early life in the Ukraine, her passage to the United States, and then hardships on a farm with her in-laws watching and dictating her every move in a 10x12 shack in North Dakota. Calof eventually raised eight kids, if I kept proper track, the final of which, Jacob contributes the epilogue to the book.