Summary

Part 1, Chapter 1 – It is 1993 in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, New York. Pasha (Pavel Robertovich Nasmertov), born in 1956 to an average family, wishes he had been born into a noble family. He has come to New York from Odessa for the entire month of July to visit his sister, Marina, her husband, Levik, and their family – including Pasha and Mairna’s parents, Esther and Robert, at their expense. They do not have much money, but Pasha has even less. The family lives right on the beach, and they rally together to convince Pasha to go out to the beach with them.

Esther encourages her son to remove his crucifix, which is a symbol of his conversion to Christianity from Judaism when he was 20, for the sake of his niece, 9-year-old Frida. Pasha’s decision to convert was a mixture of both belief and...