One Small Lifetime
- Author: Ernest Albert Thurkauf
- SKU: 2045
- ISBN: 089725483x
- Our Price:
$29.50
-
Description:
One Small Lifetime. By Ernest Albert Thurkauf, edited by Ernest Albert Thurston, Jr. Swiss American Historical Society Publication No. 20. 272pp, 2002
To do justice to this moving memoir is less than easy... (it) is in my view a very valuable book. ... Life and death, joy and sorrow, defeat and victory seemed always to have been close companions... This makes this wholly unpretentious book a work of enduring value for general reader and historian alike, a fragment that bears testimony to a rapidly vanishing past. Dr. Leo Schelbert, Swiss American Historical Society Review
His family history is typical of the pioneer spirit of those hardy emigrants who crossed the ocean seeking a better way of life, contributing greatly to this country's status as a world power and industrial giant. Citrus County (FL) Chronicle
Here is a story of one family's struggles as they traveled from Switzerland to Halifax, then through Canada and ultimately to the United States in the early years of the 20th century. These memories were burned deeply into Thurkauf's mind having grown up under harsh conditions and helping in the many tasks of survival both in coal camps and on prarie farms. The family depended on his efforts.
Life in its rawness has a way of impressing itself on young minds in a way that later years can never erase!
Included in this book along with the reminiscences are several family letters, notes from travel diaries and some Swiss family documents.
The elder Ernest Thurkauf recently passed away on September 22, 2002, just short of the age of 95 1/2 years!
