Elv­ina, whom read­ers first met in My Guardian Angel, once again draws us into her life in late 11th cen­tu­ry France. When a Ger­man Jew­ish fam­i­ly arrives in Troyes, the towns­peo­ple are quick to shun them, as they had sub­mit­ted to forced bap­tism under the Cru­saders. Elv­ina befriends Colum­ba, even as most of the towns­peo­ple sus­pect that the new arrivals in town are to blame for every­thing that goes wrong. Columba’s cousin, Ephraim, has been deeply scarred by the hor­rors of the Cru­sades, believ­ing that when he looks into his mir­ror he can see his deceased par­ents and sib­lings burn­ing in the fire that killed them. With her char­ac­ter­is­tic per­se­ver­ance and cheer­ful demeanor, Elv­ina even­tu­al­ly intro­duces Ephraim to her grand­fa­ther, the great schol­ar, Rashi, and is able to bring Ephraim some com­fort. Elv­ina is as deter­mined as ever to get an edu­ca­tion, and shares her knowl­edge with oth­ers, teach­ing her friends to read. She has matured, assum­ing more respon­si­bil­i­ty for house­hold chores, and eye­ing one of her grandfather’s stu­dents with inter­est. Weil’s vivid descrip­tion of Ephraim’s psy­cho­log­i­cal crises is har­row­ing to read, and may be dis­turb­ing to some young read­ers. Descrip­tions of the family’s obser­vance of hol­i­days, as well as glimpses into one family’s dai­ly life near­ly 1,000 years ago help to make this a fas­ci­nat­ing’ nov­el, and a wor­thy sequel. This nov­el was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in French and trans­lat­ed by the author. Ages 11 and up.