The year is 1643. After years of captivity in a monastery, young Shloime Strasbourg, Rav Mendel’s son, finally returns to his family and his people. While studying intensely in the seclusion of remote Wielkowicz, he has a terrifying dream that warns of looming peril to his mother back in Pulichev. He returns home and finds that she has indeed contracted a mysterious illness. Meanwhile, the local priest is inciting the people against the Jewish population and a boorish blacksmith has appointed himself the ringleader of the mob. Escalating tensions threaten a pogrom. Danger lurks at every corner.