Prologue

When Sarah Goldman was first put into her mother’s arms she weighed four pounds, was red and wrinkled, and had a thatch of black hair. Her young cousin Bluma, tiptoeing into the bedroom to see the newborn, rushed out screaming, “A devil baby! A devil baby!”

Sarah’s mother, Rifke, never breathed a word to Sarah about Bluma’s terror at seeing her infant cousin. Nor did her father, Jacob. It was Fanny, Sarah’s older sister by two years, who let the secret out. Sarah was eight years old when she knocked over a bottle of ink, splattering black splotches all over Fanny’s new blue dress. Fanny chased her out into the street screaming, “A devil baby, that’s what you are! Just like Bluma said!”

Fanny, fair-haired and blue-eyed, was her mother’s princess. And hazel-eyed Sammy with the blond curls, born when Sarah was ten years old, was her little prince. Sarah, thin and dusky, with straight black hair and dark brooding eyes, felt left out of her mother’s circle of love. Fanny’s scream, “devil baby,” never ceased echoing in the secret chambers of her memory.