Out of the Shadow

This is a semi-autobiographical narrative memoir by Rose Cohen (1880–1925), illustrated by Walter Jack Duncan. The work chronicles Cohen's early life in a small Russian village, beginning with her childhood memories of her parents and siblings in a log house by a lake. Cohen describes daily life, family customs, and the arrival of a tutor around age eleven, after which she becomes religiously devoted through reading religious texts. The narrative's central crisis arrives when her father, unable to obtain a passport, secretly attempts emigration to America but is arrested at the border. The family must conceal their distress while awaiting his return home under guard by an officer—a moment captured in the text as Cohen's father finally appears limping toward their house. The excerpt emphasizes intimate domestic scenes and the psychological weight of displacement and legal persecution.