Vilna, 1941. When her family is forced from their ghetto by the invading Nazis, Rosha Kaninsky, a curious child, asks her grandmother why she is carrying nothing but a jug of lemons and water. “Something to remind me of the sweetness,” the wise woman tells her. Brooklyn, 1941. Rosha’s cousin, Miran Kane, a gifted teen with dreams of escaping to Hollywood to become a designer, finds her plans abruptly thwarted when her father–traumatized by the fate of his Vilna relatives–becomes intent on safeguarding those he loves from a brutal world. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to her American family, Rosha is alive, saved when her father thrusts her into the arms of a Polish Catholic candle maker. Inspired by true events, The Sweetness is a tale of heartbreak and hope at a most tragic time in history.