When Gloria Levi is 19, she travels to the new State of Israel-and her life changes forever. What was supposed to be a summer trip between university semesters turns into an enduring love affair with the man she meets on-board the ship to Israel, and with the land of Israel itself. Told through the eyes of a young woman and mother, her memoir recounts the painful and poignant journey of a young family trying to integrate into Israeli society in the 1950s and her realization that her path to Israeli identity is both complex and multilayered.