Sissy Carpey

A Piece of Her Heart: the True Story of a Mother and Daughter Separated by the Russian Revolution and the Lives Their Families Built While a Sissy Carpey

In 1922, a young Jewish widow fled from the Russian Revolution, constant pogroms and civil war with four of her five children, leaving her oldest daughter, Frayda, in their village in the Ukraine. As Malka ran, she prayed that one day she would see her daughter again.

In A Piece of Her Heart, Malka's granddaughter, Sissy Carpey, chronicles a real-life family saga that spans life in the shtetl, the Russian Revolution, and an eventual escape to America-retelling a compelling story of the separate lives their families lived in the United States and the Soviet Union during a turbulent time in history. Carpey shares the details of how in 1963, nearly a half century after she had left Russia, Malka received a letter that delivered shocking news-Frayda was alive in Uzbekistan. After two years of cutting through red tape on both sides of the world, mother and daughter were finally reunited on a May evening at Kennedy Airport in New York City.

In this poignant narrative, a Jewish mother and her daughter prove that despite the insurmountable challenges that stood before them, the strength of their love would bring them back together as a family once again.