Review of Helmut Fischer’s
Discovering America (AuthorHouse: Bloomington, 2019)
Albany, CA 94706-1307
August 28, 2019
Konrad Kemper, the adolescent hero of Discovering America (Bloomington: AuthorHouse, 2019), Helmut Fischer’s first published novel, recounts his experiences with his mother and father in a refugee camp near Salzburg in post-World War II Austria, as the family awaits their much-anticipated immigration to America. The story of this memoir cum novel is excellently told from Konrad’s point of view, through his interactions with other refugees in the camp, who include nationalities from Eastern Europe and Yugoslavia, with all the ethnicities of that complex region, and Austrian locals and American soldiers of the occupying forces.