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The Good American: A Story Based on True Events

In the spring of 1948, Ruth Karstens, a young widow and a refugee, struggles to survive in a western German city devastated by war. Hunger and poverty, tenacity and resourcefulness, are ever-present guests in the crammed attic room where she lives with her two small children, Penelope and Eva, and her sister, Hannah. Having escaped from a Russian prison camp, Hannah has had to leave her five-year-old daughter, Pauli, behind in Berlin with her mother-in-law, Martha, who stalls bringing the child west. When the Russians threaten to blockade Berlin, Ruth decides to get the child.

The journey requires a visa from the Allied Forces occupying Germany at the time where Ruth meets Major Ted Whitman, an American fighter pilot, temporarily assigned to the visa office because of an injury. Ted falls in love with Ruth the moment she stands before him in her mended dress and her borrowed jewelry, her proud demeanor and her defiant air that seek to mask her abominable poverty. Her fate so moves him that he risks a court martial to get her passage to Berlin. Ruth is able to snatch Pauli after a violent argument with Martha, but on the way home, the Russians start the blockade and stop all modes of transportation, stranding Ruth and the child. The Russians, however, are no match for the resourceful and defiant Ruth.

Some forty years later, prompted by her own painful childhood memories of a world utterly broken, Penelope Karstens writes a novel of her mother's perilous journey through enemy territory and of the American who loved her. Titled The Good American, the manuscript, unwittingly, becomes a document of redemption for Ted's estranged son, Alex, now himself a pilot who, reluctantly, seeks out the attractive Penelope to fulfill one of his father's last wishes.

  • Format
  • paperback
  • Pages
  • 264
  • Language
  • english
  • ISBN
  • 9780595160327
  • Release date
  • 2000