"Alone in her Brooklyn apartment, where for decades she never had a moment to herself, Rivke Vasilevsky spends her days at the kitchen table, nursing a glass of hot water and lemon, listening for the telephone, and thinking about her life. An eighty-nine-year-old widow, Rivke feels she has nothing left to do but think about what has brought her to this juncture. What sets her to this task is her discovery that some crystal beads (precious to her but of no value, she knows herself, to anyone else) have vanished--and her certainty that they have been stolen. As she tries to determine who is responsible for the theft, she considers and reconsiders all that has ever happened to her, trying to make sense of the countless, unrelated, seemingly unremarkable moments that are her life--and the inner monologue that Michelle Herman creates for her is alternately funny and sad, and always extraordinarily moving. Rivke draws the reader into her life, from her childhood in Poland to her marriage to Sol and their life together, from her children's childhoods to the lives of her grandchildren. Throughout, it is Rivke's point of view--her vision, her voice, her version of the truth ("You're like a Communist country," her granddaughter Rachel tells her, "always revising history")--that is unceasingly, insistently present, as she takes readers on a journey through her life. Missing is the voice of someone you know, the story of someone you'll remember, an unforgettable encounter with a woman of indomitable spirit"--