I decided to read this book because I read a review that mentioned the characters living in the (fictitious) town of Beatrice, Missouri located on the Missouri River, where the residents were German speaking. My grandmother was born in the very similar town of New Haven, Missouri and didn't learn English until she went to school. Any resemblance between my family and this book ends there.
The story is told by the grandson of Frederick, an amateur opera singer, and Jette who were young lovers when they left Germany for a new life in America. They marry on board a ship bound for New Orleans. After arriving in American they travel up the Mississippi in hopes of finding employment in Missouri. On the way to their destination they find the small town of Beatrice where everyone speaks German and decide to settle there. Jette gives birth to their first child and Frederick finds work in a tavern. Eventually they become owners of the tavern and Frederick leaves his wife and two children to fight for his new country in World War I where he meets a young officer named Harry S. Truman. When prohibition begins, Jette turns the saloon into a restaurant with the help of an itinerant Jazz musician the couple met in New Orleans. The story continues through multiple generations of the Meisenheimers with the tavern/restaurant and music as centerpieces for the lives of the family members. They face numerous joys and tragedies and continue on with their lives. The Good American is a realistic story of what it meant to leave everything you know in the country of your birth and adopt a new life in a strange place that you come to call your own.
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