In a Jewish village on the eastern European steppe, a Cossack pogrom destroys Ruchmiel Cohen's family and changes the course of his life forever. Separated from his mother and siblings, Ruchmiel and his twin brother grow up in a brutal orphanage, where hunger, violence, and loss test his fragile faith.
Against every expectation, Ruchmiel survives. His journey carries him from the ruins of the Old World to immigrant New York, the battlefields of the First World War, and a hard-won family life in Brooklyn. But the wounds of one generation reverberates through the next, and sets a new, disasterous course for his family.
An intimate and epic story, Grievance of the Sad Angel is a deeply imagined Jewish American saga and a meditation on survival, belief, and the mystical forces that shape a soul.
