Sisters Lila and Rose are spending the year with their eccentric grandmother, who runs a doll hospital. The girls are not pleased with the arrangement, but they begin to enjoy themselves when they learn their grandmother has a special power to "read" the lives ot he dolls she is working to restore. In each book, their grandmother tells the girls the story of a different doll. In this first book, we meet Tatiana, a Russian doll who travels to Ellis Island with her owner, a girl named Anya.