Isaac and Bellatine Yaga grew up on the road with their parents' traveling puppet show, but neither has a good relationship with their parents as adults. Isaac ran away as a teen and has lived as a train-hopping actor and scam artist into his early twenties. Bellatine moved across the country to study woodworking in New England were she is trying desperately to live a normal life despite her power to bring inanimate objects to life. Her power, and Isaac's shapeshifting ability, are inheritances of a generational trauma from a history they barely know. But then another inheritance arrives for them in New York: a house on chicken legs, built by a Russian Jewish ancestor who survived the pogroms of the 1920s and the turmoil of the Russian Revolution. To Isaac, the house is an opportunity. To Bellatine, it is a home. But it comes with a curse: a shadow man follows the house to America, wanting to finish the destruction he started. I loved this story, woven through with Jewish folklore and American folk songs, a road trip story, a story of facing and accepting family history and how far its shadow falls into the present. I image this book gets compted with American Gods by Neil Gaimen and The Golem and the Jinni by Helen Wecker but it is very much its own book with its own lyrical tone. And its queer! Highly recommend.