Unearthing the lost story of his maternal family, the author, a historian by training, discovers the amazing journey his mother's family undertook from Tsarist Russia to America. **The 1986 animated musical adventure film called "An American Tail" recounts the story of a seven-year-old mouse, Feivel Mousekewitz, whose family leaves Russia and migrates to the United States.

They do so with the conviction that "there are no cats in America. " Before they left Russia, Feivel's family lived in the home of a Russian Jewish family called Moskowitz.

When I first watched this delightful, animated film, I had only a vague of recollection that the surname of my maternal grandmother was "Moskovitch. " This book unearths the story of my real Moskovitch family and the true story of their journey from Russia to America.

Interested in recovering your own family's Russian-Jewish immigration history? You will be amazed from the effort of this historian who shows just how many lost details can be recovered from existing records and how they can be narrated into a rich tapestry that captures a family's immigration story. Howard Schwartz.