Janko Vygoda's parents spend their time drinking themselves to an early grave at the village inn; their farm is mortgaged to the hilt to the three local moneylenders, a Pole, an Armenian and a Jew. Janko swears he will keep his inheritance intact, will not sell one square inch of his land. The man he holds responsible for his misfortune is the Jewish innkeeper, Leib Weihnachtskuchen, who also arranges loans for the local peasants. By chance, he discovers the Jew is not the bloodsucking monster he imagined and the impoverished innkeeper becomes his only friend in the village. Gradually the Christian Janko falls in love with the Jew 's daughter, Miriam. He swears another oath: 'one bed or one grave'. The only chance Leib and his wife have of providing for their daughter is to marry her to an old Jew, the owner of the local sawmill. The wheels of tragedy are set in motion. 'Leib Weihnachtskuchen and his Child' is a story of obsessive passion set in Podolia, now part of the Ukraine but in the nineteenth century a backward , multi-racial corner of Europe where the Russian and Habsburg empires met.