In Search of Angels: Travels to the Edge of the World

For seventy years after the publication in Germany in 1917 of Johannes Gillhoff's best seller "Jürnjakob Swehn — der Amerikafahrer" (translated recently into English with the title "Letters of a German American Farmer") the readers of the book debated whether It was fact or fiction and, if fact, who wrote those immigrant letters from Iowa back to his teacher in Germany. The present book is a factual narrative of the ten-year search which in 1988 revealed the true identity of Jürnjakob Swehn and showed that most of the book is fact. The narrative documents how Swehn's family fared of five previously unpublished letters to Iowa from the Gillhoff family.