Sandra Perez Gluschankoff

Thorns for Raisel Sandra Perez Gluschankoff

Four gunshots, a dead woman, and a frantic crowd. Veronica Simon watched the chaos unfold around her, unable to grasp how this nightmare started... It was supposed to be a glorious day. The grand event Veronica had diligently planned over the last year was finally here. Dame Salva, the legendary nonagenarian, the champion of women's rights, was set to deliver her last public address before a hall filled to capacity. But the excitement turned to panic when Raisel Wisnik - an old hat maker, gunned down the famed activist. The police tried in vain to get her to talk, but Raisel would only speak to one person- Veronica Simon. As Raisel tells Veronica her story, she is swept back seventy years to a shtetl in 1922, Poland. It is there that Veronica discovers Raisel, at only fourteen years of age, was sold as sex slave to the notorious Jewish Polish mafia, the Zwi Migdal, and shipped to South America. The details of Raisel's tragic journey cross paths with the Dame's, making it hard for Veronica to distinguish fact from delusion or one woman from the other. Now, with conflicting facts in her hands, Veronica is left with the choice of either walking away from it all and labeling Raisel a deranged old woman or giving a voice to a macabre story that lay buried for over seven decades.