Immigration is the sincerest form of flattery.
- Jack Paar

The Fellow Utopian - A Novel by Wilfried F. Voss

At this moment I am sitting at the Panera Bread branch in Hadley, Massachusetts. I haven’t been here for several weeks, but I need to get back into the usual routine of taking a day per week to write. However, I feel like a lame duck in the water. I have been separated from my previous novel The Bleeding Hills and I am attempting to establish a mental connection to my next work. It isn’t as easy as I thought.

Let me try by elaborating on my ideas for my next work. The title will be “The Fellow Utopian”. That’s how I work: I develop the idea in my mind, I come up with a title, and the cover is already in the works. I had the idea for The Fellow Utopian long before I started writing The Bleeding Hills and I have already been through several titles and covers.

The Fellow Utopian tells the life story of Anthony M. Shoemaker, who immigrated from Germany to the United States in the mid 1930s. The reason to leave Germany is the current political situation. Shoemaker is a convinced communist, which made him a prime target for Hitler’s henchmen.

Doesn’t sound very original so far? Okay, here we go: Through written communication with an uncle in Wisconsin he is convinced that America provides the perfect feeding ground for a new, communist society. After all, the Declaration of Independence, just like the Communist Manifesto, calls for equal rights for everybody. In addition, there is the new President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and his “New Deal”, a policy designed to even the differences between poor and rich. The story describes his transition from his communist ideas into a dedicated love for the United States of America. Add to this a good portion of Charlie Chaplin and Ephraim Kishon and you get the picture.

The story will not only explore immigration policies in the 1930s and life as a German in 1930s/1940s New York; it will also address the great love that the vast majority of immigrants feel for this country. American citizenship, the way I see it, is still a privilege and too many Americans were willing to jeopardize the foundation that provides this privilege. This foundation, as provided by the founding fathers, is the constitution of the United States of America. I am referring here especially to the dark years of the Bush administration, during which a majority of Americans were too willing to give up constitutional rights. There is a difference in view between people who were born as an American citizen and those people who had to apply for citizenship. It seems that the average applicant is more sensitive to changes in constitutional rights than the average born American.

Every few years immigration issues pop up in the political landscape and, being an immigrant myself, I always had the feeling that too many politicians conveniently forget that the vast majority of American people descent from immigrants. My two year old son, born in Greenfield, Massachusetts, is an American citizen, and he will learn from his parents to appreciate that privilege.

Anyway, this is what the new book is about, and I will continue posting updates on this blog.