Ushered into the world by a mysterious pair of Tartar midwives late in the summer of 1877 in the town of Constanta on the Black Sea, Eleonora Cohen proves herself an extraordinarily gifted child--a prodigy--at a very young age. When she is eight years old, she stows away aboard a ship, following her[...]

A magical historical novel about an astonishing eight-year-old girl in the last days of the Ottoman Empire. It is 1877, on the shores of the Black Sea, and the omens for the newborn Eleonora Cohen are hardly promising. Not only does her mother die in childbirth, but her village is being attacked by[...]