The author, Norbert Krapf, is a descendant of German immigrants. His writings
reflect the experiences his ancestors must have had on arriving in the new world.
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He stumbles off the ship America, parts from the people who speak the only tongue he's ever known, and leads a wife and six children toward the middle of a dark continent. Eight pairs of shoes shaped by the contours of cobbled Bavarian streets must soon begin to fall evenly upon uncultivated ground. Like a startled rabbit, the woman cocks her ears for the pealing of distant churchbells. the children cling to the man's overcoat like cockleburrs. A sailor whose eyes blink back to the vineyards patching the banks of the Main River, he knows he must learn to navigate this foreign land by foot. He stares at the bark of trees he's never seen, flinches at the songs of birds he's never heard. He worries about laying seed in the soil in the spring. He sucks in his breath, puts down one foot at a time. |