A Jewish woman in a 19th-century shtetl nearly loses her mind when her six-year-old son is torn from her arms, bound for a twenty-five-year enlistment in the Russian army. She spoils her second son rotten, a foolish, headstrong young man eventually married off to avoid the army but forced to flee to America when he gets a young relative of his in-laws, who is working in their home, pregnant. In New York during the draft riots of 1863, he gets an Irish girl who loves him pregnant too, but he ref...