Jacob's Way

"The army makes a man hard sometimes. I remember a young girl no more than ten who gave me a glass of buttermilk just outside of Chancellorsville. I still remember that. I guess that's all my life is. Some pictures fading out behind me, and there's not much before me." Reisa listened as he spoke. She knew that he was a man who longed for goodness, and longed for friends, and perhaps even a wife and family. Finally she said, "I hope you find your way, Ben. God is real, and love is real." Fleeing a bloody pogrom that threatens their tiny Russian village, Reisa Dimitri and her grandfather, Jacob, sail the ocean to a new life in America. They are swiftly embraced by New York's Jewish community. But God has other plans that will call them far from the familiar warmth and ways of their culture. Accompanied by their huge, gentle friend, Dov, Reisa and Jacob set out to make their living as traveling merchants in the post-Civil-War South. There, as new and unexpected friendships unfold,...