GENISIS
I was inspired to write Heimat while building a family ancestry binder for my first grandchild. I had a trove of documents from my father who immigrated to the United States in 1929. In addition to his birth certificate, immigration documents, passport, TS Bremen ticket, and various German and United States government forms, he saved letters from his mother, sisters, and other relatives sent to him in the years before and after World War Two. I was intrigued to learn what was said. There were more than thirty letters, most handwritten in the Sütterlin Schrift, so I had to transliterate the words into modern, readable German and then translate them into English. These letters not only facilitated the timeline for the story but also provided the narrative, which was the conflict of an immigrant’s allegiance to his country of origin, or his commitment to his adopted country during World War Two, and his mother’s hopes to see her son again.
I published Heimat in September 2021.
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