Bird of the Wilderness

This impressive coming-of-age novel, published in 1941, has the unusual setting of a German-American small town during the First World War. The small town called Parkerton is based on the the the Illinois town of Pana, where the author grew up. The central character, Bill, is the teenaged son of a Dresden-born mother, who teaches music to the children of the town's leading families, and an absent Welsh father. Bill has no sympathy for his uncle's blinkered pro-German patriotism and longs for the day when he can escape small-town life and join the army.

The author, Vincent Sheean (born 5 December 1899), was brought up in Illinois. He went to the University of Chicago and interrupted his studies in 1918 to join the army with a view to serving in Europe. He was disappointed when the armistice came: “I was sorry when the war ended... There were millions of us, young Americans between the ages of 15 or 16 and 18 or 19, who cursed freely all through the middle weeks of November. We felt cheated. We had been put into uniform with the definite promise that we were to be trained as officers and sent to France.” He returned to university in March 1919. On the death of his mother the following year, he moved to New York to start a career in journalism. In 1922 he moved to France to work for the Chicago Tribune, travelling widely as one of its foreign correspondents. In addition to his reporting, he wrote works of fiction, biography and memoir. He wrote a young autobiography called Personal History as he observed the rise of fascism in Europe. It was later adapted into an Alfred Hitchcock film.

There is a rising conflict for Bill Owen, the central character, between his German parentage and his American upbringing. His mother, Louisa, "was filled with foreboding; the year was 1916 and two of her brothers and no fewer than seven nephews were in Germany; she had produced an alien son in a strange land, and although the land was also hers... the growth of her son was setting her apart from it...”
Bill talks about his mother's native country as a detached foreigner:
“The Germans are killing Americans all the time, sinking our ships, insulting us every day, and that Wilson does nothing at all about it except send notes and notes and notes.”

The Singing Tree

This impressive children's novel, published in 1939, is set in rural Hungary during the First World War. The central character, Jancsi, as an adolescent, takes charges of the large family farm when his father leaves for the front. A contemporary review considered it “as moving a plea as I can imagine for maintaining racial and international goodwill”. In particular, the novel describes the close relationship between the Hungarians and the Jews in the village, the mutual respect between the Hungarian family and the Russian prisoners of war who they engage as farm labourers and the friendship towards hungry German children who are sent to the farm for nutrition towards the end of the war. The title of the novel comes from a story which Jancsi’s father tells the family about a battlefield where only one tree survives the devastation. All the birds of different sizes come and sit in the tree and sing. One of the characters recognises that he's also using this story to talk about his farm as a place of wartime refuge.

The author, Kate Seredy (née Serédy Kató, born 10 November 1899), grew up in Budapest. She served as a nurse to the wounded during the First World War. After the war she qualified as an art teacher. She emigrated to the United States in 1922. Her first novel (The Good Master, set in Hungary, with her own illustrations) was published in 1935 and was shortlisted for the Newbury Medal. Her third novel, The White Stag, won her the Newbury Medal in 1938 and her fourth novel (this one) was, like The Good Master, of which it is the sequel, shortlisted for the Newbury Medal. She settled in Montgomery in New York State. During her career, she wrote and illustrated 12 books of her own and illustrated many other books for children.

Jancsi and his father (before leaving for the Front)

Hans, one of the German refugee children who come to live on the farm, writes home to his mother in the autumn of 1917:
“These people do not hate anyone. In our school in Berlin we were told that Russians and English and French are monsters... That is not true, Mother. The six Russians... are like German men, like Papa. Maybe the French and English men are the same. Our teacher told a lie about the Jews too...
I do not hate Russians now, Mother, and I think the Jews are very kind and good. When I grow up, I want to be a teacher and teach what Grigori is always saying. He says that people are all the same in Russia and Germany and Hungary and that we are all brothers. It's true, Mother. Why did our teacher in Berlin lie to us?”