FINDING HOME

Heritage House, Surrey, BC, 2004, 1^st/1^st.  ISBN 1-894384-76-8.  Trade soft cover, 336 pages including Photo Credits and About the Author.  Very good; light edge and cover wear, touch of soil on bottom edge, no reading creases; binding tight; interior clean and unmarked; SIGNED on half-title page in blue ink.  Illustrated with black & white photos, family tree.  ‘Franz (Frank) Oberle was nine years old when his family was relocated from Germany to Poland.  Once there, he was taken from his parents to an isolated school where adolescents were being indoctrinated into the Hitler Youth.  As the tide of war changed, he became a refugee fleeing the Russian advance, arriving in Dresden as the city became the target of the most horrific Allied bombing of the war.  Surviving on grass and stolen eggs, Franz and a friend walked 800 kilometres to his ancestral village on the edge of the Black Forest – only to find that his parents had not returned and to be rejected by his remaining family.  … the first volume of Oberle’s memoirs, is set against the backdrops of the Second World War and the raw British Columbia frontier.  …  Rich in detail, drama, and humour, this is a love story, an inspirational saga and a book that sings the song of the Canadian immigrant.’ (from rear wrap)