Thursday Review

A Good American

Alex George

I wanted to check out the copy of A Good American by Alex George from my local library, but it was unavailable. So I checked out the Audio CD’s.  I proposed listening to them as my husband and I traveled back and forth to another city to ready his mother’s house for sale. It is really not a book he would have chosen. However, we were both pleasantly surprised.  It is a really good story.

The story begins as a beautiful love story between two people who come from two different backgrounds in the early 1900’s in Germany. I quickly came to love both Fredrick and Jetta.  The author describes Jetta as a big woman, who did not conform to the  wasp-like figures of most women of that time. I loved her at once, as a rebel who was happy in her own skin.

I also learned that many immigrants did not land in New York, but in some rather unusual ports such as New Orleans or Galveston.  The fact that they entered the US from New Orleans shaped their destiny. They settled in Beatrice Missouri.  The story stays in Missouri as it tell the story of Fredrick and Jetta Meisenheimer and their family.  All the family members were very real to me.  I could see my parents in Joseph and Cora, though they would have been a few years older.

The Meisenheimer family experienced many of the same things that my own family experienced. Strong love between a man and a woman, children who were a challenge, hard times in keeping a business going, and even family secrets that were kept secret at all cost. 

I enjoyed this story very much. I would recommend it to any reader. Some of the themes are adult, but are dealt with as “normal”.  I would let my high school age grandchildren read this wonderful story.

I originally chose this selection as part of the  Amy Einhorn Reading Challenge at Beth Fish Reads. I have read 4 of the books on the lists and have not been disappointed by any of them. I will definitely continue to read my way through the list of books published by Amy Einhorn .