THE PURSUIT

The descendant of a German immigrant family explores his ancestors’ contributions to American history in this nonfiction work.

In his first book, Ruth, a retired financial planner and writer, researches the lives and legacies of his ancestors, starting with his fifth great-grandfather: Peter, a Prussian immigrant who brought his family to Pennsylvania in 1733. Following some of Peter’s descendants, as well as diverging branches of his family tree, Ruth traces the westward movement of successive generations from Pennsylvania to Illinois, Minnesota, and South Dakota, celebrating the service of the family’s military veterans as well as the everyday accomplishments of ancestors who worked as tavern keepers and traveling salesmen, music teachers, and frontier mothers. Ruth’s narrative is at its best when he allows his ancestors to tell their own stories by sharing quotes from taped interviews, written reminiscences, and letters, such as those from a Union Army soldier who wrote home to complain about lackluster military rations. A son’s moving tribute to his deceased mother (“We had seen her hands calloused and bleeding many times in those early Dakota years and each one of us had given her pain”) and a great-uncle’s memories of mustard gas attacks and shell shock in World War I provide authentic and enlivening glimpses into these historical eras. In other parts of the book, Ruth relies heavily on general historical sources that lack any unique perspective, and when discussing Indigenous Americans, the author has a tendency to use outdated terminology. His writing is otherwise skillful and his familial pride is palpable, but this narrative of assimilation, challenges, and successes represents a quintessentially American story, similar versions of which could be told by countless descendants of immigrants. The personal reflections of Ruth’s ancestors, providing distinctive eyewitness testimony to the history they lived, are used to great effect, albeit too sparingly.

A heartfelt, if somewhat limited, look at an American family’s legacy.