A Sky Full of Song

February 20, 2023
In 1905, after her mother is injured in yet another attack on Jews by the tsar’s soldiers, 11-year-old Shoshana, her three sisters, and their mother hasten their plans to travel from Liubashevka, their village in Ukraine, to America. They’ll join Shoshana’s brother and father in North Dakota, where they’ve spent the past three years starting a farm, having themselves fled to avoid her brother’s conscription into the tsar’s army. Though Shoshana aches for her community and the silvery white birches of her homeland, her first experience of a prairie sunset pulls her to the unfamiliar terrain. As she learns about the U.S. government’s displacement of the Dakota people, Shoshana compares the act to the Russian Empire’s treatment of Jews, becoming keenly aware that this displacement made her family’s resettlement possible. The ignorance, mockery, and cruelty Shoshana and her family endure, including antisemitic slurs and physical assault, create painful conflicts between Shoshana’s pride in her identity and her desire to fit in. Meyer (Skating with the Statue of Liberty) layers richly detailed depictions of Jewish traditions, stunning descriptions of the landscape, and a highly sympathetic narrator to convey an underreported historical arc. Protagonists present as white. Back matter contextualizes the well-researched book’s history. Ages 8–12. Agent: Rena Rossner, Deborah Harris Agency.