Book Description
From Omaha to Oakland, from Coffeyville to Contra Costa County, two immigrant families act out the American dream. This true story of two Midwestern families begins in England and Prussia, and hopscotches across the U.S. to chronicle the lives of the Foltzes and Pickerings. Settled in Omaha and small-town Kansas respectively, they seek advancement – through jobs, romance, higher education, lower humidity. And advancement, for most, leads west. Their narrative is the story of America writ small, in sharply rendered profi les: of Clarence Foltz, Omaha physician and thrower of dinner-table bones; Ruth, his wife, diffi dent but weary of hot summers and capable of hurling dishes when the subject is his philandering; their four daughters, who form a string quartet and build their own couture. Th e youngest becomes a stewardess in the pioneer days of commercial aviation. The Pickerings have their own quirks. Th omas, scion of a prosperous English farming family, chucks it all and joins the 1851 gold rush in Australia. His brother John, a newly minted lawyer, goes to Kansas to be a farmer. Divorce scatters Thomas’s family; a son invests (unwisely) in California orange groves. The two clans connect in Depression-era Seattle when George Pickering meets Ethel Foltz. Th ey marry, and World War II prods an ingathering of the family to California, where Clarence and Ruth now reside, escaping Omaha’s weather. Some serve in the Pacifi c Th eater. In postwar Oakland Ethel indulges her love of music, studies voice and makes prominent friends. As the years begin to claim family members, some branches will die out. If there is a moral, it is the importance and comfort of memory.
