Going for it in America

      A Good American lived up to all its hype. The praise for this immigrant family saga by Alex George came gushing back in February. Amazon put the book on February's "Best Books of the Month" list; Barnes & Noble named it a Discover pick for  Spring; B & N also listed it as a Top Staff  Pick for Fiction in February; the folks with Oprah's O Magazine ranked it their  #1 "Title to Pick Up Now" for the same month. The buzz continued, and NPR's Morning Edition inserted it into the "Top 2012 Summer Read" collection. 
   Consider me on the bandwagon, too. I loved it.
   Like most readers, I mentally click off things that I like and dislike about books while reading, and by the end I know what I'd tell a friend or fellow reading junkie about the book. Here's how my tally breaks down: immigrant tale (always a favored story line for me), check; three generations of family drama, hardship, humor,sacrifice, heartbreak and success, check; vivid and believeable characters, check; surprise ending,  DOUBLE check.
  And then there is the nice addition of music that plays throughout the story. Another unexpected check.
   In 1904 Frederick publicly serenades Jette in a Hanover, Germany garden and their futures are sealed. The music melts her heart, and in no time the couple is in love. But all is not well with Jette's family and the pair sails to America to begin anew. They buy passage on a ship bound for New Orleans--lots more musical connections there--and ultimately settle in Missouri. The Meisenheimers go on to own a bar (with musical acts aplenty) and ever-evolving restaurants through the years, but the fellow Americans they meet along the way and the appearance and actions of their children and their children's children had me turning pages feverishly. I hunkered down with this book while we lost electricity for six hours last Sunday and by the time the Olympics came back on tv later that night, Frederick and Jette had two grown children ready to launch their own lives.
   Two days later I was done and knew it all--how all the grandchildren turned out, where they lived, how they became good Americans and the story behind the big family secret that I never saw coming.
  Immigrant stories touch my soul. The characters who land on American shores to carve out new lives and new destinies are always inspirational to me. Fictional newcomers--like their flesh-and-blood counterparts--leave everything familiar behind to find freedom and opportunity here, and so it was with A Good American.
   Interesting footnote about the author. Alex George is an Englishman who moved to America in 2003. He's an immigrant and has written an absorbing and entertaining immigrant story. He followed the standard advice to all writers---write what you know. Seems only fitting that he did something so characteristically American with all his hard work and talent---succeed wildly.
   Way to go.

The Push From the Book: each book we read leaves its mark and gives you a push: a new way of thinking, a new take on life, new ideas, new goals. Here's what this book did to me:  The book and its characters embraced their freedoms and the American work ethic. It made me see that I could and should work harder in all things. This is, afterall, America. Immigrants come here from all over the world for a better life. Do those of us born here sometimes forget America's blessings and our own potential? Yea, I think so. Not every day is July 4, but novels like this remind us of what we celebrate on that day and why we're so lucky to be here.