Another Way Over: A Novel of Immigration to America

John J. Michalik

Description

In 1910, Jan Brozek is a lone traveler, making his way across a Europe preparing for war, intent on immigration to America to establish a new life for himself and his fiancee, Maria, who will follow once he has earned the money for her passage. Early in his travels he saves the life of Anna Ihnacak, the beautiful daughter of a Hungarian nobleman - their easy attraction creates emotions that, as he travels on, he has difficulty dealing with and understanding. Ready to sail across the Atlantic on the last, three-week leg of his journey, he is stunned when his careful plans are derailed at the last minute and he must choose an alternate course, one that sets him on what would be a two-year odyssey covering three continents.

Sujets

• Historical
• World War I
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Outskirts Press
• Date de parution: 22 novembre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781977250339
• Langue: English

Extrait

ALSO BY JOHN J. MICHALIK


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Another Way Over: A Novel of Immigration to America All Rights Reserved. Copyright © 2022 John J. Michalik v2.0
The opinions expressed in this manuscript are solely the opinions of the author and do not represent the opinions or thoughts of the publisher. The author has represented and warranted full ownership and/or legal right to publish all the materials in this book.
This book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Outskirts Press, Inc. http://www.outskirtspress.com
ISBN: 978-1-9772-5033-9
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021922389
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Outskirts Press and the "OP" logo are trademarks belonging to Outskirts Press, Inc.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
For Diane
TABLE OF CONTENTS

AUTHOR’S NOTE
PART ONE: Across Europe
Chapter 1: May 1910 – Važec
Chapter 2: Štrbské Pleso
Chapter 3: Poronin
Chapter 4: Krakow
Chapter 5: Russian Territory
Chapter 6: Germany
PART TWO: At Sea
Chapter 7: August 1910 – Bremerhaven
Chapter 8: The North Sea
Chapter 9: Cardiff
Chapter 10: Lisbon
Chapter 11: The Cape Verde Islands
Chapter 12: The Tropics
Chapter 13: Recife
PART THREE: Argentina
Chapter 14: September 1910 – Buenos Aires
Chapter 15: Mendoza
Chapter 16: Buenos Aires
Chapter 17: Buenos Aires
Chapter 18: Buenos Aires
Chapter 19: Buenos Aires
Chapter 20: Buenos Aires
Chapter 21: Buenos Aires
PART FOUR: To America
Chapter 22: February 1912 – Buenos Aires/Recife
Chapter 23: The Caribbean
Chapter 24: New Orleans
Chapter 25: Chicago
Chapter 26: Chicago
Chapter 27: May 1913 – Minneapolis
AUTHOR’S NOTE

While Another Way Over is a novel, the story it tells is inspired by the travels of my paternal grandfather in immigrating to the United States in the early 1900s.
He was one of many in the peasant populations of Central Europe who, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, sought a new life in America. For those people, "the way over" typically involved a journey of more than three thousand miles that began with making their way by various routes, depending on the location of their home villages across parts of Bohemia, Austria, the Polish homeland, and Germany to one of the great embarkation ports of Hamburg and Bremen. From there, the usual sea voyage two to three weeks, depending on the weather was by steamship through the North Sea and across the vast expanses of the Atlantic Ocean to any one of a number of American harbors, but principally New York City, where immigrants were received.
As a young man, my grandfather exhibited courage and determination in pursuing his dream of a better life. In common with many others who set out from the Old World to the New most of whom spoke little or no English and were unsure of exactly what they would do and what life would be like at their destination he persevered and overcame uncertainties, unexpected obstacles, and what had in every case to be ever-changing fears and anxieties that were unknown in the life that he left behind. As with few other such immigrants, his way over was quite different: while enroute, he faced dramatic and wrenching changes in his plans that took him to places he had never heard of, threatened his cherished dreams, and surely tested his resolve and commitment.
The story follows, in large part, the route and the timeline of his journey. And, to the very limited extent to which an often reticent man cared to share them, the bare bones of some of his experiences along the way provide the seeds for parts of the story in the pages that follow.
That said, this is a work of fiction. Names, characters, dialogue, and correspondence, as well as the events that appear in this novel, are either products of my imagination or are used and presented fictitiously: any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, as well as the circumstances of their lives and their experiences, is entirely coincidental. A partial exception to the previous statement relates to the main character: Jan was the given name of my paternal grandfather, and I have used that name in the story because his journey is the inspiration for this book. Still, though the fictional Jan Brozek you will meet in the following pages has much in common with my grandfather, those shared characteristics do not in any way imply that the story of the fictional Jan is in all respects and details the story of his real namesake. And as is often the case with a work of this sort, the telling of the story at times involves references to historical figures, settings, locales, and events some well-known, some far less so. Those are accurately presented, though they are all passing in nature and in any case do not change the fictional character of this book.

John J. Michalik
September 2021
PART ONE
Across Europe
Chapter 1
May 1910 – Važec
The late-afternoon sun at Jan’s back cast his long shadow on the hard, gray dirt of the cart path. He followed the shadow as it led him home and envied it just a bit, for while it roughly shared his shape and form, the shadow was free of the churning he felt in his stomach. Despite not having eaten since early morning, he knew that his discomfort was far less a sign of hunger than of the mixed feelings and the nervousness that came from being only a few hours away from leaving his family, and the only home he had ever known, forever. If everything went according to plan in the coming weeks, he would never again walk this path or spend another day in the familiar and if only because of its familiarity safe world in which generations of his family had grown up and lived out their lives. In the normal course of life in those earlier generations, such a leaving would have seemed almost incomprehensible, more wrong than right, and far more perilous than safe.
In the distance, the tall steeple of the evangelical church provided the first sign of the village of Važec. He was walking east from the neighboring village of Východná, where he had spent the better part of the day in the last of many visits with the transplanted German shopkeeper and tobacconist Johan Schmidt. They had met and formed a fast friendship some years before, near the end of Jan’s military service. German was the language of command in the Imperial and Royal Army of the Habsburg Empire, but Jan had not been comfortable with his fluency in that language, and his friendship with Schmidt had grown to include the twice-weekly lessons and drills that had progressed to the point that, as they had parted this afternoon, Schmidt had clapped him on the back and declared him "proficient." He himself wasn’t sure of his proficiency, but he believed that his German would, with his native Slovak and his easy grasp of the related Polish language, be good enough to get him through Central Europe on the journey he would begin the next day.
Važec, Východná, and other rural Slovak villages were strung along the valley below the High Tatra Mountains, which formed a rugged frontier with the Polish homeland to the north. Walking was the usual local method of travel, and distances were measured by how long it took to get from one place to another. Východná was not much more than an hour from Važec, though today Jan’s pace was slower than it had been on all those other days when, his lessons over, he had walked this way in the fading light of early evening. On those occasions, he had made better time, hurrying through the growing darkness to get home after a long day of hard work that began at sunrise.
Today was also different in that, not long after sighting the church steeple, he saw his father off to the side of the path just ahead. He was sitting on some large rocks, smoking his pipe in the meager shade of a small cluster of budding trees. The occasions were rare and far between when his father didn’t work at something right up until dinnertime; much less be found taking his ease under a tree.
Michal Brozek was shorter and stockier than his oldest son, but apart from the disparity in height and build, they were very much alike. Father and son had the warm, weathered complexion and appearance of men who spent most of their lives doing hard outdoor work; Michal’s tanned face also had begun to show the lines and furrows of a man well into middle age. Their hair was a distinguishing feature: both had and had had, since each was a small boy thick, predominantly dark hair that was prematurely streaked with gray. That coloring extended to the father’s broad mustache and also became evident in the son’s facial hair on those occasions when he didn’t shave for a day or two. They shared penetrating deep-brown eyes under heavy eyebrows, and serious, determined expressions that could easily give way to broad smiles and laughter. And the son had inherited not only much of his father’s appearance and considerable physical strength, but also his stoic outlook, calm disposition, and tenacious will.
As Jan approached, Michal reached into his vest pocket and extricated a second pipe, which he held out to his son.
"You left this behind this morning, and I thought you’d need it by now," he said, apparently in explanation of his presence under the trees.
"I do," Jan replied, taking the pipe. "But that is not why you are out here."
"I suppose it’s not. And how is our friend Herr Schmidt?"
"He is fine and sends his regards. He also sends you this, with his compliments." From his rucksack, Jan retrieved a thick pouch of tobacco.
Michal