Yankel's simple life is upended when the Nazis invade Romania in this biographical novel. As the fascist dictator Ion Antonescu imposes increasingly ruthless antisemitic edicts, the horrors of the Holocaust are visited on Romania's Jewish community. Stripped of their rights, Yankel's family is forced from their home in Czernowitz and sent on a long and dangerous journey across the Dniester River to Transnistria - the Ukrainian killing fields. Through the ghettos and labor camps of Ukraine, the front lines of the Red Army, and the displaced persons camps of Italy, death stalks Yankel at every turn as he struggles to survive.