A Jewish American family bickers, squabbles and kvetches their way through Poland on a quest to find traces of their family roots from before the devastation of World War II and the Holocaust. Of particular interest is an old mill which, um, well, try not to look at the cover if you want to be in suspense about that.

Of course, the story is less about the quest and more about the relationships, at the center of which is the family black sheep, Malka. She's in quite the slump: jobless, broke, diagnosed with ADHD, facing eviction with no new home lined up, shamed for having had bed bugs, and being told by her son that he'd rather live in another state with her ex-husband. And on top of all this, she just found out via Facebook that she has been left out of the family pilgrimage.

The relationships in the book are almost too realistic, being muddled and focused on the little things that bug each other. The developments of the story are almost too realistic also, with the victories being as small and muted as the setbacks.

In the end, I never warmed up to sad sack Malka and the rest of the family irritated as much as they interested me. Also, the storytelling relied heavily on the reader studying the family tree provided at the front of the book, with at least one character going unnamed for much of the book and the actual familial relationships hardly explained in the story proper. And then there's that mill on the cover.

But the biggest problem I had with the book occurs on page 75. The family goes to an Elton John concert, and rather than working out some way to present the music graphically, the author actually inserts this text in the word balloons coming out of the singer's mouth: "Elton John's song lyrics are copyrighted by Universal Music Publishing -- and were not available for this graphic novel." This serves no purpose other than to display pettiness and to throw me out of the narrative. So here I am being petty in return: a third star was not available for this graphic novel. ( )

Turns out this isn't even a complete ARC, I don't think. Last page says, "Sample End." In any event, I didn't really care for it. It's one of those stories where there doesn't seem to be anyone you can actually cheer for. Malka, the main character, isn't just flawed but actively cringe-worthy in almost every interaction. Maybe in the full version she shows some character development, but as this ARC stands, I don't have plans to find out. ( )