The Way Home: A German Childhood, an American Life - Memoir of Immigration & Cultural Identity | Perfect for Book Clubs & History Enthusiasts" （注：根据跨境电商商品特点，假设这是一本回忆录书籍。若商品类别不同，请提供更多信息以便更准确优化）

Ernestine Schlant Bradley's memoir, The Way Home: A German Childhood, an American Life, is a personal document of the way, or road, she traveled and her changing perspectives as she lives her life. Having left her Bavarian home to settle in the US, Dr. Bradley shares many experiences with the million or more German speaking immigrants to the American continent in the postwar era. She left in April 1957 to explore the world as a hostess for Pan Am airlines and her very attractive picture from that time adorns the book's dust jacket. She then married and lived in Atlanta where her first daughter was born but soon began to take courses which led to a career as professor of comparative literature at New School University in New York. In1974, she married Bill Bradley, later the Senator from New Jersey. Ernestine clearly deserves credit as a survivor, not only of World War II and the hard post-war years, but also of an early divorce and breast cancer.The Way Home is, however, more than a memoir; it is a detailed record of the author's continuing discovery of new views of the stations along her life's road. She creates lively images of the streets of Passau and the Danube River, her playground in her carefree early youth during World War II, and of her postwar years in bombed-out Ingolstadt. As she revisits these sites, the images get more detailed and personal. This approach can almost be compared to the way an artist gradually chisels his sculpture. We learn for example how a few hours in her grandfather's garden were often the only rest from a life of chores and learning because Ernestine became responsible for the household and her substantially younger siblings during her mother's frequent illnesses. As new perspectives reveal continually greater truths, this stylistic feature also reflects her personal maturation. In the process we see how family members influenced her and how she also came to view their roles in the hard events that made for the history of Germany. As she comments in her thoughtful way on that history, we find that her approach rarely lends itself to easy quotes about this difficult time. Late in life Ernestine also discovered her own somewhat complicated family story. The fact that her mother was at the time of her birth married to a man who was not her father briefly led to accusations of misrepresentation during Bill Bradley's campaign in the 1999/2000 presidential primary. Without this public exposure she might not have been led to these personal documents in the Passau archives.By revisiting major stations on her personal road Bradley shows the reader how she, as we all do, grew in understanding, and, after all, that's what life is all about! If this "way" in the title gives the book structure, then changes for the word "home" give it depth. The reader will have to work a little when primary relationships are also frequently revisited. In the process, the meaning of the word "home" is freed from its connection to a place and stands increasingly for a condition of emotional wellbeing, an adjustment that immigrants can surely follow. An elderly aunt, Tante Betty, was her care giver in Passau and provided "home" for the young child. Her mother never succeeded in fulfilling this role and Ernestine admits that even beyond youthful rebellion the relationship remained strained through most of her life. However, she found her emotional home in her relationship to her two daughters and to her second husband, Rhodes Scholar, NBA star, and Senator Bill Bradley. Building their life together around two jobs and a daughter and suffering together through her cancer treatments, they consciously worked on giving each other an emotional home.The Way Home was begun as a testament to her daughters and grandchildren. Readers will be grateful that it was also published, especially because it addresses the many issues around Germany's role in recent history in such a compelling way. Immigrants will find themselves empowered by Ernestine Bradley's honety to address those issues from the American perspective. All readers will find that this book is hard to put down. It is hoped that a translation will make it equally compelling for readers in Germany.by Anne Marie Fuhrig, Ph.D., erstwhile Asst. Professor at MacMurray College, Jacksonville, IL.