Mary Lifton left her family in Latvia in pursuit of a better life in New York. She found work in the garment district, alongside many others from the Jewish diaspora. Alone and subsisting on minimal wages, Mary was swept up by love in a steamy romance with a man who would force her into two back-room abortions and finally father Lillian Faderman before he disappeared from her life. Moishe kept Mary from doing what she most needed to do: finding a way to get her family out of Latvia, before Hitler's Holocaust engulfed and destroyed them.