Suffer Not The Mole People by Jan Notzon
What does it take to forsake all that’s familiar: lives, language, customs, culture, family, history to pick up stakes and flee to a new world where much is promised but nothing guaranteed?
This is the frightful challenge facing the Kaczmarek family in 19th century Silesia, Poland. Where does an individual and a family find the courage to face such a wrenching ordeal? Will the dreams, the fears, the hopes and misgivings pull them together or tear them apart? Will they overcome their doubts or succumb to the depredations of their Prussian overlords? What kind of people would trade the security of the known for the tentative promises of freedom and opportunity?
And what is the essence of this United States of America that beckoned them and still beckons others from all the ends of the earth to its promised shores?
Follow them here on their onerous journey over land and sea and heartache as they dare to seek freedom and fortune far from the meager comforts of home.
First Impressions Review:
Poland in the 19th century was a land of impossibilities. The patriarch of the Kaczmarek family remembers having to sneak around just to learn how to read when he was a boy. Now his son can’t seem to find steady work due to his Polish ancestry, and he sees his grandchildren suffering under increasingly oppressive Prussian rule. They hear about the United States as a land of possibilities, but they don’t want to leave the land that their ancestors have called home for so long.
I was able to enjoy the first few chapters of this book and was immediately drawn in by the characters. Seeing a grandfather struggle so much to try to help his children was heartbreaking. Every grandparent wants to see their descendants live easier lives than they did, but things have only seemed to get worse over the years. I cannot wait to dive deeper into this family drama. Do they end up coming to the United States, and if so, what is their journey? The curious name of this novel intrigued me from the start, and now I only want to learn more.
