To thirteen-year-old Chris, orphaned in East Germany during World War II, the thought that he was going to live in the United States was almost unbelievable. Brought up in a quiet mountain village by a wise old woman who had taught his mother, he had led a simple life, simple until his activities with a group of freedom fighters made it imperative that he cross the border to West Germany and safety.

And the America, with its bewildering variety and great abundance of everything! Sturdy and independent though he was, Chris was confused by many things in the new world and longed for the day when he could live as an adopted son with Larry, an ex-GI who had befriended him as a child in Germany.

By this time Larry and Denise, his French wife, had already adopted a small Italian girl and a Korean boy who were proving too much for Denise, since she had had a baby of her own. So Chris spent his first winter in Chicago, boarding with a family who ran a restaurant where he washed dishes to earn his keep. Not until late summer, when Larry's "international" family moved to a ranch near Santa Barbara, could Chris join them and feel that at long last he had "come home".

In this rich, exciting, and deeply moving story, Mrs. Benary, and author of distinction who has experienced both wartime Germany and postwar America, weaves the many strands of Chris's life into a glowing, living tapestry of events and people. Once more, as in such earlier books as The Ark and Castle on the Border, she writes with compassion, authority, and a deep sense of human values.

From the dust jacket

Preface:

This book does not pretend to give a complete report of what I think and feel about this country; besides, I am fully aware that even after seven years I am still a beginner. That may be the reason why I was able to see it all through Christoph's eyes: the excitement about a country and a people so different from what he has been used to. Christoph is often delighted, sometimes bewildered, occasionally critical, but aware that as yet he can only realize the glittering, many-colored, confusing surface; he never generalizes, I hope, and is always willing to accept, to appreciate, to understand.

I dedicate this book to the cause of better understanding: to my friends in Europe, so that they may learn a little more about America; and to my friends in this country whose kindness and inspiration has been a never failing help on my own "long way home".

Santa Barbara, Calif.                     M.B.-I.