In what little spare time he , Frederick to study English. He books from Dr. Becker and for an hour each morning. Every week he the town's newspaper, the Beatrice Optimist, and slowly his way through it, dictionary by his side. He closely to conversations at the tavern, eager to grasp the language's strange vernacular. Frederick an assiduous student. A year after their arrival in America, he had a fair vocabulary and rarely caught out by the army of irregular verbs that in ambush. But for all his hard work, Frederick no gift for English. After the dour rigidity of his native tongue, its anarchy him. There always a glimmer of apprehension in his eyes when he , as if every sentence a high wire from which he liable to topple at any moment. His unease him retreat from the perils of idiom. He a cautious, formal mode of speech, although this just because of his fear of opaque colloquialisms: English the language of his family's future. It to be spoken with respect, not sullied with lazy elisions and cheap slang. As he to the alien words form themselves in his mouth, his heart would with pride.

Because Frederick America. He its big open spaces, the sunsets that the evening sky in blistering color. He the warmth of the people. Above all, he the smell of promise that in the air. Europe, he could now, was slowly under the weight of its own history. In America the future the only thing that . Frederick his back on everything that had before, and ahead into the bright lights of the young century. Here a man could himself. His determination to learn a new language his own path toward such reincarnation. German just an echo of his past.

Jette not so lucky. Joseph's birth, rather than directing her eyes toward the future, instead her gaze back toward the home she had behind. Motherhood everything that she she . Everything was now through the prism of a new mother's love. She down at Joseph as he , and that she would be if he ever her. Suddenly, remorse through her as she about her parents, alone now on the other side of the world. It had her idea to come to America, but now she to wish that they had never . As she Frederick eagerly immerse himself in his new country, she her homesickness a guilty secret. Unlike her husband, Jette scarcely a word of English. Almost everyone in the town still German, and she her old language a welcome comfort in the face of the strange parade of foreign customs outside her front door.