THE RUSSIAN GIRL is based on the true story of a woman who escapes from a high security nursing home during the hottest day of the year. The thermometer reads 115⸰ and she is dehydrated, lost, slogging through the burning sands of a New Mexico desert, constantly craving an ice cold Coke.
Her delirium reveals a harrowing story of a young immigrant Russian girl forced to come to America in the early 1900s. Her turbulent life is filled with upheaval, lost love, and activism in a crushing, brutal 20th century journey.
Minna Goldmich’s mind wanders, remembering her childhood as a peasant girl in Russia—the youngest in a line of Jewish healers. Her family only survived being butchered by marauding Cossacks because of her and her mother’s unique ability to heal cows.
The fourteen-year-old Russian girl’s life is forever changed when she is almost raped. While defending herself, she accidentally kills her Jew-hating attacker and is forced to flee from the only life she’s ever known.
Alone and traumatized, her mother sends her to America to live. There, she not only joins the great melting pot of people from all over the world, she meets the love of her life and becomes a visiting nurse on the streets of Harlem. But her chaotic life is always overtaken by violent historical events that continue to reshape not only her life, but the world around her.