Against the backdrop of a country destroyed by war, two women struggle to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives in the Allied territories of Western Germany in 1948. Their tenacity and resourcefulness to conquer hunger and poverty--perennial guests in their crammed attic room--become a testimony to the strength and resilience of the human spirit. Ruth, a young widow with two small children, Penelope and Eva, lost her husband after WWII. Hannah, incarcerated by the Russians in Eastern Germany for vagrancy, has had to leave her five-year old daughter, Pauli, behind in Berlin when she escapes from the prison camp. When the Russians threaten to blockade Berlin, foreshadowing a permanent division of Germany, Ruth, who has a passport, decides to get the child. Her journey through enemy territory becomes an unforeseen odyssey of ingenuity and sheer pluck.
Some forty years later, prompted by her own childhood memories of growing up in a world utterly broken, Penelope Karstens writes a novel of her mother's perilous journey and of Ted Whitman, the American pilot, who fell in love with her the moment she stood before him in her mended dress and her borrowed jewelry, her proud demeanor and her defiant air that seek to mask her abominable poverty. Titled The Good American, the manuscript, unwittingly, becomes a document of redemption for Ted's estranged son, Alex.
The Good American: A Novel Based on True Events is featured by the book information site BookBrowse.com in its Best of the Year 2001 list. All proceeds of books purchased at Amazon through BookBrowse are donated to charity.
About the Author
Ursula Maria Mandel is the author of two novels, The Good American and Diary of a Naïve. She has also published a number of short stories and essays as well as a two volume collection of humorous tales, Memories of VMI. On November 28, 2010, she published the children's book, Bo on the Fencepost, an e-Book.
Outside my window lives an old and confused crabapple tree. It sheds its leaves in the summer, and by August, it is bare. It's an odd looking thing, coming out of my front yard like the skeletal hand of a prehistoric monster buried eons ago. A crippled palm hides, slyly, a withered thumb that curls at the base where a wrist should be and isn't. Four dark spider fingers, fifteen feet tall, their skins scaly and their joints swollen, spread wide like the spines of a Chinese fan whose silk is gone. In the winter, sky and light pour through these fingers like so much water. But in the summer, when the Gothic vault of these suburban woods leaves us but a nickel's worth of sun, the tree and I live, perennially, at dusk. The crabapple, I suppose, takes this gloomy twilight as a sure sign of autumn. Its leaves turn yellow in June, and by August, it's a corpse. When I sit at my desk to write, I stare out at that hand. Sometimes for hours. Nothing much is coming of the writing anyway. So why am I torturing myself? My mind's as barren and wooden as that calamity out there. I should have written long ago if that's what I wanted to do, not put everything else first--husband, children, house, garden, laundry, cooking, nursing, nurturing. Can't make up for lost time and words not written. Can't force putting something on these empty pages if there's nothing inside to put there. A handyman, hungry for work, rings my doorbell and asks if I need that tree taken down. He's not the first. In the company of my neighbor's manicured lawns, the tree stands out like an aberration begging for deliverance. It's not done much this summer but drop its meager fruit into the grass where the yellow jackets rage. He could cut it, I imagine, right there beneath that withered thumb, and I could plant a medallion of impatiens around it until the stump decays, or adorn the wound with a pot of cosmos to make the neighbors happy. I shrug. "I'm not sure," I say to the handyman. "I think I'll wait awhile. That tree might come to something yet, might shape up, surprise us all." "Whatever you say, ma'am, but that thing is deader'n a doornail." I swear the old goat of a tree hears every word and smirks every time, because each spring this old hand works the same miracle, and year after year I manage to forget how miraculous that work. On a day when I pay scant attention, the spider fingers start collecting hearts, the size of teardrops and ruby red. When next I look, these hearts are strung all over that tree, on boughs and twigs and over and under and back and forth until the hand is filled to the brim with jewels, heart shaped and the color of aged Burgundy. Some unsuspecting morning, I walk out of my house, looking at my feet, thinking, frowning. Something calls me without sound and I look up, startled. Where there should be a tree there is a cloud--an immense cloud made entirely of blossoms, tourmaline and perfect, ethereal and amazing. I stare at them, dumbstruck. Can't help but smile at that joke of a tree that set out to prove something, old as it is. I shake my head and get back to my desk where, once again, an empty page waits in my typewriter. I seem to get some pleasure out of torturing myself by way of white paper, and so I sit, chin in palm, and dream out at my transfigured tree that seems to mock me. Slowly it starts dropping blossoms, one by one, a petal at a time. Softly, they spiral downward on spring air and then lie in the grass like rare pink pearls.
5.0 out of 5 starsThe Best Book I've Read in Ages!, April 27, 2001
By A Customer
This review is from: The Good American: A Novel Based On True Events (Paperback)
This truly is the best book I have read in a very long time. I read it in two days, because I simply could not put it down. It almost seemed like it was two stories in one. I was anxious to find out what would happen with Penelope and Alex, but also wanted to know the whole story of Ruth and Alex's father. The book was so well written, I felt like I was right there, watching everything happen. The book also gives us a different look at the war and how it affected people that is not written in any history book. I have already bought two more books to give as gifts and will definitely recommend "The Good American" to anyone who enjoys reading.
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This review is from: The Good American: A Novel Based On True Events (Paperback)
All whose lives have been touched by the ravages of war bear in their memory forever the grief, losses, and struggles to grasp some meaning for living out the balance of their days. The post-war adjustments for many perhaps never end. Time has a way of mending broken hearts but the wounds and scars of war heal very slowly. We meet people every day whose lives have been changed immeasurably by conflict and many of their stories never get into print. The several life stories that are woven so ingeniously in The Good American are reminders of many who have coped courageously with adversity and found a way not only to survive, but also to use their limited resources and native talents for remaking of an orderly world. Ursula Mandel, who grew up in postwar Germany, weaves a tale of ordinary people who did extraordinary things. The warm German hospitality I found as an American officer stationed in Wiesbaden three decades after World War II had ended grew out of a mutual respect Americans and Germans had one for another. Americans I knew immensely admired the German work ethic and ingenuity, their clean streets and homes, their delicious strudels, their superb automobiles, but most of all their determination to rebuild their cities and lives. Ursula Mandel's book is a benediction and compliment to those Americans and Germans who loved and cared enough to forge a lasting friendship for our two countries. The book has the essentials for a powerful cinema and I hope to see the story come alive on the big screen.
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This review is from: The Good American: A Novel Based On True Events (Paperback)
I guess I'm a little confused by the previous reviewer's comments and her lack of historical knowledge, at least where laptops are concerned. The Good American is a wonderfully written book and I fail to see what self publishing has to do with the quality of one's work. If only I could write like this and have the courage to then present my efforts to the World. And since when does the mention of laptops circa 1992 in the book diminish its validity? I work in a technical field so I happen to know the first laptop (the Osborne 1) was invented in 1981. In 1992 there were many competing laptop makers in the market, from Zenith and Compaq in 1989 to Apple with their first Mac PowerBooks in 1991, and the IBM ThinkPad came out in 1992. Obviously the previous reviewer has some sort of agenda as evidenced her critical reviews of other authors. Read The Good American and in so doing support entrepreneurial authors; you'll be treating yourself to a beautiful story.
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