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.