"When the River Ice Flows, I Will Come Home is a moving memoir that lovingly recreates the lives of Elisa Millerâ s father and his family as Jews in the dying years of the Romanov dynasty."Â â Douglas Smith, author of Former People: The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy

Shortly after her fatherâ s death, Elisa Brodinsky Miller uncovered a cache of letters among his belongings. Written in Russian and Yiddish, with datelines in Tsarist and early Soviet Russia, the letters detail eight long years (1914-1922) during which Elisaâ s father, his five siblings, and their mother spend apart from Elisaâ s grandfather who had left for America, believing their separation would be short.

Miller, a Russian affairs specialist, learns bit by bit with each translation about the family she knew so little about, and the eight years of history they lived through, enabling her for the first time to connect her own experiences with those who came before her. This captivating memoir bridges the past with the present, as we learn about her grandparentsâ struggles to escape Tsarist Russia, her parentsâ hopes for their marriage in America, and her own reach for meaning and purpose: each a generation with dreamsâ first theirs, now hers.