Your Mouth is Lovely by Nancy Richler

“Your Mouth is Lovely” is set in Russia in the years leading up to the Revolution and centers on the life of a poor Jewish, motherless child, Miriam, who grows up on the outskirts both of her village, and of its sense of community. After some years of being fostered out, she is returned to her father’s home when he remarries. Her stepmother, Tsila, raises her with a rough, irritated, kindness, making sure she knows how to read, among the other things she believes it necessary for a girl to know. In later years, Tsila’s sister Batya gets involved in political protest, and has disappeared somewhere in Kiev. Miriam convinces her parents that she should be the one to go find her. How she ends up in a prison camp in Siberia writing to the daughter she will never see is as fascinating as the rest of her story.