 The Struggle to Survive By: Donald F. Megnin
Pages : 239 Book Format :Trade Book 6x9 Subject : FICTION / Family Saga Description | ||||
Volume I: The Security of Silence The first novel of the trilogy portrays the lives of Emilie and Friederich Malin originating in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in southwestern Germany. Emilie came from an upper middle Class family whose father was a newspaper owner/publisher. Tragically, she lost her father when she was 13 years of age and never quite got over the loss. She met an older man who was not only a prosperous businessman, but one whose family, her mother said, was from the lowest class in town. She ignored her mother's advice and married him. He became a father surrogate for her. She had everything she wanted. Her comfortable life style continued even though she discovered her husband had an unsavory appetite for women. She attributed his difficulty in relating to other persons because of a war wound as a soldier in the German army in World War I. He had lost his ability to speak in a normal tone of voice due to the incompetence of the field surgeon who cut the nerves to his vocal cords. He could only whisper and subsequently, Emilie became his interpreter with the customers for his business. He resented this dependence upon her and decided it would be best to emigrate to America as the rest of his family had done. Emilie did not want to leave Germany, but she felt herself trapped in a marriage from which she believed she could not escape. She was afraid of her husband's anger and felt, for the sake of their children, she would have to remain silent. Volume II: A Conspiracy of Silence A Conspiracy of Silence is the second novel of the trilogy and takes place initially in Germany as the family gets ready to leave for America. Emilie learns more about her husband's infidelities than she really wanted to know but felt there was nothing she could do about them. She believed them to be part of the past and her orientation was always to look towards the future. Upon arriving in the United States, Friederich buys two different businesses before deciding to buy a farm. He knew nothing about farming but thought he would have fewer encounters with other people on a farm. His handicap would not be such an overwhelming problem for him. His sisters and one brother-in-law go into farming with him from April to September only to find that the combined income from tourism, operating a gas station, dairying, and raising crops were insufficient to maintain three families. They leave him and his wife to return to the city. Friederich and Emilie have to do the work once carried on by four additional persons. Emilie doesn't see how they can do all of the farm work plus take care of the gas station and care for her family with a third newborn. But learning to milk, in addition to caring for their three children, cooking, planting crops and harvesting them, leaves her no choice but to work as she had never envisioned. In Germany she had been a Kindergarten and Elementary school teacher. Her husband tells her she has no alternative other than to continue to work the farm with him. The depression deprives them of any surplus savings and the devastating barn fires end their dairy operation. The work of last resort is to turn to the woods which Friederich does to cut firewood for income and logs with which to saw lumber and rebuild his barns. His proclivity for sex, however, continues to know no bounds. Volume III: The Struggle to Survive The Struggle to Survive is the final novel of the trilogy of this immigrant family. Emilie and Friederich have survived the transition from Germany to the United States. They have moved from an urban environment to a rural one. They have fallen to the lowest level of income. In spite of all of these difficulties, they survived to rebuild their barns, resurrect their dairy, expand their animal husbandry operation to include goats and pigs as well as cows. They also watch their children grow into adolescence and adulthood. The older son has a distinguished record in scouting, high school and college. Participating in the R.O.T.C. program in college, he has a Second Lieutenant's commission waiting for him when he reaches age twenty-one. Because he must wait almost another year, he worked on his parents' farm. He becomes enamored with farming so that he wishes to pursue it as a career. After entering the army in the late summer of 1942, however, he meets a First Lieutenant in the Army Nurse Corp and marries her before being sent overseas. As the war ends in Europe, he returns to the village of his birth and visits his relatives in Germany. He saves his grandmother's house from confiscation by an American officer who has come to claim it as an officers' residence. Meanwhile, his wife visits his parents with their newborn son for the first visit since their marriage. She is asked by her husband to visit a neighboring farm which is far sale adjoining the family's farm. He wishes to purchase it in order to expand the farming operation and provide them with a place to live. His wife finds the house totally unacceptable to the dismay of Friederich. Upon the son's return after the war to work on the farm (the two families live together in the same huge house), there is continuous conflict between Friederich and his daughter-in-law over the primitive conditions in the house, the inadequacies of the bathing facilities, and the grandson getting into his grandfather's workshop. As a consequence of the hard physical work, the son is laid up to recuperate for a few weeks. Friederich offers sex to his daughter-in-law whenever she would prefer since her husband is unable to perform with a "bad back". She is indignant and refuses the sexual offers of her father-in-law. As the summer wains and the prospect of living in the unheated upstairs rooms for the winter, the daughter-in-law finally gives her husband an ultimatum. She is leaving to return with their two sons to her parents in Minnesota. She tells him, he can either stay on the farm, or go with them. She has had it! She will not continue to live in such a primitive environment any longer! Her husband reluctantly leaves the farm after telling Friederich and Emilie how sorry he is to quit farming. He has no other alternative. He wants to keep his family together. THE STRUGGLE TO SURVIVE Brings Back To Life the Pain and Hardships of The Great Depression New Book marks the third volume in the trilogy authored by Donald F. Megnin's enduring Malin Family saga New Smyrna Beach, Fl. - (Release Date TBD) - There is no denying that the 1930s was a time of emotional despair and economic hardship. Back then, many families lost their respective properties and ended up in poverty. The effects and pains of the Great Depression are back again, this time in a historical fiction told in the Struggle to Survive, the third novel in the trilogy of the Malin family saga created by Donald F. Megnin. Set in the 1930s, The Struggle to Survive begins when Friederich and Emilie wonder what they should do following the devastating loss of their barns in a fire. While neither of them had any training or experience of farming prior to the purchase of "Valley Farm", Friederich was determined to keep his farm at all cost. While Emilie would have preferred returning to the city, Friederich was adamant. No one was going to take it away from him! He turns his attention to the wood lots located at north and south ends of his farm and begins the process of rebuilding through the use of his axe, saw, and horses enabling him to prepare the logs to saw into lumber. The question keeps coming up, will they be able to survive in the midst of the depression and the mortgage holders wishing to foreclose? Read the book to find out. | ||||
The Struggle to Survive
