THE WOMAN

Rachel Calof ~ A Memoir with Music dramatizes the story of Rachel Calof, a Jewish picture bride. We follow Rachel’s touching story, as she emigrates from Russia to Devil’s Lake, North Dakota in 1894, crossing the ocean to marry a man she has never met, determined to make a new life as a homesteader. For four years after her arrival, Rachel and her husband live in a twelve-by-fourteen foot shack with her in-laws, her husband’s brother, wife and children, two dozen chickens –and a cow. She gives birth to nine children on the prairie, endures brutally cold winters – and in the end, triumphs over adversity.

Rachel Calof eventually chronicled the story of those years when she was a 55 year old woman living in St. Paul. Her manuscript, handwritten in Yiddish, was discovered by her children after her death and eventually published as “Rachel Calof ’ s Story” in 1995 by Indiana University Press. Her story is filled with an engaging humor, compassion, and detailed accounting of the unrelenting realities faced by homesteaders on a windswept prairie.

Rachel Calof is, in e very respect, deliberately stark, mirroring the barren frontier. It is a show of struggle, after struggle, after struggle. Not only is it excellently realized and a testament to minimalist theatre, but it does put our own lives very much into perspective.”