Beyond the Pale follows the lives of two women: Gutke Gurvich, who apprentices as a midwife in a Russian Jewish settlement before immigrating to New York and joining the suffrage and labor movements; and Chava Meyer, a Russian Jew whose birth is attended by Gutke. A tour de force sequence involving the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire is typical of this book's power. Both epic and intimate, the book takes readers deep inside diverse worlds, with harrowing and heroic stories of midwifery, the Russian pogroms, and early lesbian life.