In Torn Thread, Isaacs creates a historical, cultural, and physical setting in order to tell her story. The story takes place in Bedniz, Poland, and Parschnitz, Czechoslovakia, between June 1943 and May 1945. As the story opens, the Jews of Bedniz have been rounded up and confined to the ghetto where they live in constant terror of being "selected" and sent east to the Nazi death camps. They live in deplorable conditions with little food and water, no jobs, and no schools, but the Buchbinder family has been able to stay together. Rachel, who is timid, sickly, and weak, is arrested by the SS and sent to Parschnitz. The Parschnitz labor camp, where Eva's father arranges to send her so that she can protect her sister, provides young girls as slave laborers to nearby factories that manufacture textiles in support of the war effort.

As soon as Eva leaves Bedniz...