When 7-year-old Mischka and her Russo-Jewish family flee the oppresive regime of the USSR for the freedom of Vienna, her world seems to divide neatly in two: there's life as she knew it before, and life as she must re-learn it now. But even as she's busy dressing her new Barbie doll, perfecting her German, and gorging on fresh fruit, Mischka is aware that there's part of her that can never escape her homeland, with its terrifying folk tales, its insidious anti-Semitism, and its old family claims. As her parents' marriage splinters and her sister retreats into silence, Mischka has to find her own way of living.