Feeling stifled as a Jew living in a Moldovan shtetl, violinist Elazar just wants to find love and eventually succeed his father as conductor of the family band and hardware business.
But that could take years, and in 1922 Kalarash, he's known all the girls his age since he was a child. He would love to move to Kishinev, Odesa, or Kyiv and become a musician, but it would kill his mama, and he'd feel guilty for the rest of his life.
At his cousin's wedding, Elazar falls for Ita Kaplan, an heiress from Bolgrad, but she plans to move to Paris and become a painter. He's then taken by Mariam Gabashvili, the daughter of a local vintner, but is forbidden to marry her because she's not Jewish.
History-the rise of Stalin, his brutal takeover of Ukraine, and later Hitler's invasion of the USSR-grants Elazar's wishes in ways he never dreams, sending he and his family on an epic flight to Uzbekistan, where they endure the war, and then back to Moldova, where they pick up the pieces of their shattered lives.
With cunning, class and determination, one violinist brings to life a turbulent era in the Soviet Union, where, while life was punishing and brutally unfair, he finds music in devastation and conducts his family-his orchestra-in such a way as to not let the horrors defeat them or hate to overcome them.