Aisik Fogel wants what every father wants: peace, prosperity, opportunity for his children. But his simple way of life in a Russian shtetl is under attack, and he believes the only way he can protect his family is to move them to America.
Hanna Fogel sees how despondent her father has become since uprooting from the only home he’s ever known. While she adjusts to a new school, new language, new culture on the Lower East Side, she searches for ways to restore her father’s pride and passion.
Set at the turn of the twentieth century, when hundreds of thousands of Jews made a mass exodus from Eastern Europe to the United States, Wretched Refuse is a story about the love between a father and daughter, and their efforts to save one another.