Journey to a New World by Myra Saturen

Myra Saturen based her novel on the notes that her grandfather, Joseph Hyman, had written in pencil on little tablets of paper about his family’s immigration to the United States from Russia in the early 1900s.

The novel tells the story of Joseph and Ruth and also Nathan and Frieda. Their parents, in the late nineteenth century, made the difficult decision to leave Russia and come to America to Cincinnati. During the period to the outbreak of World War I, many Jews left their homes in Poland and Russia and migrated to America.

The Goodman family was part of this migration; their adventures are at once unique and compelling and at the same time very like the experiences of millions of other families.  More than anything else, they stuck together, depended upon the children working to make ends meet, and paid a huge price in so many ways for the freedom and prosperity they found in America. Together they form an essential part of the making of modern America.

Myra Saturen says that on reading her grandfather's notes after he died she was “overwhelmed by the beauty and humor of the writing. It gave me a real picture of what my grandfather's, and even my great-grandparents', lives were like."

She says she wanted to preserve the story of her family for her own two children, who are now adults. "The younger generation don't know them at all," she says. "They weren't around to hear their voices and smell the foods they cooked."This is her second novel for older readers. Her first was Julietta, also published by Royal Fireworks Press, set in medieval France it is about a young woman who overcame prejudice against race and gender to become to become a herbalist physician.

Myra Saturen was born in the Bronx and lived inthe New York metropolitan area until moving to Bethlehem, PA,in 1988. She is married to the composer David Saturen, and works in the public information office of the Northampton Community College, Bethlehem, PA.

Read a review about the book by Geoff Gehman