Opa Nobody (American Lives)
In her first book, teacher and activist Huber reaches across time and space to find guidance and camaraderie in the reconstructed life of Heina Buschmann, the German grandfather she never met. Struggling to balance her personal and political lives, Huber looks to Heina to find out why she so burns to change the world, and what her sense of mission will cost her and her newborn child. Born in 1902 to a union coal miner, Heina devoted his life to German socialist movements in much the same way Huber devotes hers to American leftist activism. And just as anxiety, depression and exhaustion accompany Huber's political highs, failure, frustrations and alienation accompanied Heina's. In his world-a sooty Germany awash in communist, socialist, and fascist movements-we feel the urgency and impact of personal politics as history gathers the factions in its maelstrom. Although the imagined dialogue sometimes falls flat, the family relationships and political situations are wrought finely enough to illustrate what's at stake for Heina. Unfortunately there are so many gaps in the portrait Huber paints of her own political world that the reader is left wondering about her own motivation.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.