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"Each winter I'm sure will be my last. Dust to dust, I find myself saying as my frozen fingers struggle to hold the pen with which I write these words to you, Ashes to ashes, I mutter, and nothing but suffering and joy in between. I've had my share. Hot and sharp -- I taste it still in the blood that fills my mouth when I cough." Miriam is a nineteen-year-old imprisoned in Siberia following the Russian Revolution of 1905. Reaching out to the young daughter whom she gave up at birth, Miriam weaves a haunting tale of life in a small Jewish village during the last days of imperial Russia and of a community caught between the rich yet rigid traditions of the past and the frightening, unfamiliar ways of a society desperately trying to reinvent itself.