The Russian Jewish author Isaak Babel (1894-1940) became famous over night in 1925 upon the publication of his collection of stories The Red Cavalry. When he was arrested in 1939, his fate took an abrupt turn. He was executed the next year.

Interweaving fragments of Babel's stories with interviews with surviving family members, Isaac Babel pieces together a portrait of the writer.

Babel had children by three different women. Janssen tracked down three children and his only surviving widow, Anthonina Pirozkhova. They tell their own stories of Babel as a glamorous figure, but also as something of a tyrant. Pirozkhova and Babel's daughter shares memories and photos of herself as a baby with him; but his two other children recall more the mystery he represented in their lives.

Pirozkhova has devoted much of her life to keeping Babel's memory alive, and getting his work on bookstore shelves. She talks about the recurring theme of family reunion that ran through his work, but there seems to be little evidence of efforts towards such a goal in his own life.

But no one denies his talent, as the literary selections show. Indeed, the renowned director Sergei Eisenstein, one of the most important filmmakers of the era, based his unfinished film Bezhin Meadow on a story by Babel.