Susan Lynn Meyer is the Jewish author of two previous books, Black Radishes and Skating With the Statue of Liberty, both of which I read and enjoyed. In fact, I have Skating With the Statue of Liberty in my library, and I would love to have Ms. Meyer’s other two books in the library, too. I’m fairly picky these days about what I include in my library (running out of shelf space), so that’s a high recommendation.
A Sky Full of Song is set in the early twentieth century, beginning in 1905, and it’s a sort of Little House on the Prairie with Jewish immigrants from Ukraine. Persecution and pogroms have driven Shoshana and her family out of their home in a Ukrainian village, and they are leaving to join Shoshana’s father and older brother in “Nordakota”. Shoshana is sad to leave her cat, Ganef, behind, but Mama says it’s too difficult to take a cat across the ocean on a boat. “More difficult, that I don’t need.” Mama already has four daughters to take care of on the long journey to Nordakota, and that’s enough. (I agree with Mama.)
Anyway, the family finally gets to North Dakota and homestead that Papa has been preparing for them, but all is not roses and joy on the prairie. There is loneliness, and prejudice, and the struggle to make a new beginning while hanging on to old customs and identity, here in a new country. Shoshana gets used to the beauty of the wide plains that make up her new home, and she loves school and learning and making new American friends. However, she is somewhat ashamed of the language (Yiddish) and cultural habits that make her and her family different from those who live around them.
Shoshana’s family seems to be deeply Jewish in identity and culture, but not so religious. There’s little or no mention of God or prayer or scripture in this book, but much emphasis on Jewish traditions and holidays and the Yiddish language. Shoshana knows that her family wouldn’t want her to be celebrating Christmas at school by making Christmas decorations and singing Christmas carols, but she doesn’t seem to know why her family would eschew such things, other than the fact that Jewish people don’t do Christmas. For the setting of this story, the idea of finding one’s identity in one’s own family and cultural heritage, without examining the underlying meaning of that heritage too deeply, makes sense.
“But the lights of the menorah, all together on this last night of th holiday, burned strong. They stood for the way the Jews carried on.
For the way, wherever we went, we held onto who we were.”
The blurb for the book begins with the words: “An untold American Frontier story . . . ” And indeed the thought of a Jewish family proving a homestead on the North Dakota prairie was new to me. I think of Jewish immigrants coming to New York City like the All-of-a-Kind Family and like the family in Skating With the Statue of Liberty, not farming on the prairie. But immigration happened in all shapes and sizes, from all countries, and to all sorts of different places. A Sky Full of Song tells one story of Jewish immigration and assimilation as well as strength and heritage.
Content considerations: Persecution and violence both in Ukraine and in the U.S., name-calling. Shoshana’s older sister gets her first menstrual period and is ridiculed and harassed.