The Promised Land

At eight, Mary Antin rides away from Polotzk and finds the Dvina waiting for her in another city. If the river runs beyond the edge of her world, where does Polotzk end—and what lies beyond the boundary she has been taught to fear?

In this early-twentieth-century autobiography, Antin recalls her childhood in Polotzk, a Jewish town within the Russian Pale of Settlement. A child’s puzzlement over rivers, railways, and distant cities gradually gives way to a harder discovery: the limits placed on her people, and the casual cruelty they are expected to endure. Yet alongside fear and exclusion, she remembers a family and neighbors who offer shelter, kindness, and a sense of belonging. How far can a girl’s world reach when others insist she must stay within its borders?

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