AllMovie

After gaining nationwide notoriety as the catalyst in a sensational murder trial, model/actress Evelyn Nesbit Shaw was besieged with vaudeville and motion picture offers. Contrary to claims made in the 1981 film Ragtime, Shaw did not make her film debut in a slapstick "beach" comedy, but instead in the 5-reel Lubin drama Threads of Destiny. The star was cast as Miriam Grunstein, a young Russian Jewish girl who suffers no end of trouble after her mother is killed in a pogrom and her father is shipped off to Siberia. "Rescued" by Russian secret service head Ivan Romanoff, Miriam is raised in a convent, little suspecting that Romanoff plans to make her his mistress. Forewarned of this in a message sent by her dying father, Miriam escapes to America, where she becomes the wife of a handsome rancher, himself a Russian expatriate. After eight years of domestic bliss, however, the girl's happiness is shattered when Ivan Romanoff comes back into her life. Things move swiftly to a literally explosive climax involving a gang of Nihilists bent on killing both Miriam and Ivan. Russell William Thaw, the real-life son of Evelyn Nesbit Thaw, is cast as the heroine's offspring in this heavily plotted effort.