Unexpected Legacy

In 1909, Solomon Lefkowitz, a young, Jewish immigrant who has recently fled a pogrom in Poland strives to get a foothold in the garment district of New York City. His new country, new language, and the limited opportunities for immigrants of his background, crush his hope of becoming a psychologist and his desire for a life with Rose, a wealthy, young German Jewish woman. He must make the most of the limited opportunities life offers him, with help from family and others in the Jewish immigrant community of New York's lower-east side, even as he finds himself swept up in the Uprising of the TwentyThousand, part of the labor movement coming to a boil in the garment industry of that era.

One hundred years later, Miri Perelman, Sol's great-granddaughter, remembers only infrequently that her family were immigrants. Her life is centered around her struggle to establish herself professionally in the art world. Her cousins, Dalia and Seth, each struggle with their own problems: Dalia with compulsive spending and alcohol, and Seth with angrily avoiding anything conventional-the Establishment, as he calls it.

Their surprising rediscovery of an extraordinary piece of art that once belonged to Sol links the two generations. In struggling to make decisions about this treasure, Sol's descendants discover their connections to one another and come to a new undertanding of themselves, their history, and their culture.