In this heartfelt novel, written in 1932, Fanya Ivanowna, a Polish Jew from New York's Lower East Side, meets Henry Scott, a well-bred professor who first helps her fulfill her ambition to become a writer, then falls in love with her-but only to change his mind and rebuff her socially.  Fanya is hurt, but instead of returning to the ghetto to live among "her own people, " as so many have done before her, she decides to continue to better herself, to become more American.  She moves to a small New England town, where she meets her soulmate, a non-Jewish Polish immigrant, and prepares to make a home.            
A moving portrait of an indomitable immigrant woman, as well as an early and optimistic story of Jewish assimilation and inter-marriage, with an introduction by Dr. Catherine Rottenberg, who places the book within the context of Yezierska's work and Jewish American history.