Time: the late nineteenth century. Place: the city of New York, a mecca for the ambitious and the corrupt where the poor barely survive on the wages for their fourteen-hour work day. Crime is at its highest, higher than it will be in all of the city's history. Nevertheless, the burgeoning city is alive with possibilities. This is the setting for a different kind of coming-of-age story. Sixteen-year-old Rivka Lenski, a recent Russian Jewish immigrant and orphan, cannot even read or write English. Her days are spent on survival.

When her coworker and friend Frieda Baum is found murdered in a house of assignation on Allen Street, Rivka pledges to find the murderer and bring justice to her friend's devastated family. Rivka's search to find her friend's killer leads Rivka deeper into the diverse and complex world of late nineteenth-century New York, a world rife with corruption, racism, and crime yet filled with colorful characters like the criminal lawyers Hummel and Howe and Mother Mandelbaum, the head of organized crime in the city. Rivka's search brings her face to face with the intertwined worlds of this New York, from the glorious mansions of Grammercy Park to the haunts of ambitious prostitutes and entertainers, into the lives of women who love each other as well as informants and pickpockets while growing stronger and more aware of a world she had never before noticed. Through her unexpected friendship with Mercy, a maid in the house where her friend Frieda died, Rivka learns how to read and write and about the cruelty of racism in her new land. In searching for a murderer, Rivka learns to become a detective and an American.