A FAR PLACE, the sequel to GERMAN YANKEE takes the reader on an emotional account of another generation making unthinkable sacrifices to find a better life. Schutte is a master at pulling the reader into the lives of her characters and compels you to turn the page. John and Mary Wamhoff have a good life in rural Germantown, Nebraska in the late 1800s, it is all Mary ever wanted-a lovely Victorian home with two children and a successful, ambitious husband. However, John Wamhoff grew up with nothing but abuse and degradation-he has dreams of overcoming it all, but he will need his wife by his side. This is a family saga, a true story taken from the author's family treasure of stories.
"Deep are these roots, inescapable, restorative. I thought about how life had gone on, generation after generation. Perhaps the past is really never gone, but always a part of the present. Lingering there in the quietness, I gathered up the people, the places, the little fragments of another time." Courtesy: Helen Raley
1894: Germantown, Nebraska: John and Mary Westerhoff Wamhoff elope and begin their married life in this small town where her parents live and her father is idolized. John Westerhoff wants what his father-in-law has-something he has never had. He has a chance meeting with a Lutheran missionary, a visionary who is organizing a Lutheran colony in the far reaches of Wyoming-a final opportunity to homestead and build a new life. John knows in an instant this is what he wants, what he needs, and he is determined to have it all. It is with trepidation that Mary finally agrees to leave a life she loves, to follow her husband on what she sees as folly. Traveling overland into the wilds of Northwest Wyoming in a covered wagon with two small children, Mary realizes her worst dream. Every hill they climb, every barren sagebrush-covered prairie they cross, brings them closer to John's dream of the future and further from her own. What will it take for John to convince Mary, this is where they belong? The hard life takes its toll on their marriage even though they flourish in the community and build a life together. They make it through WWI, the Spanish Flu, the Great Depression, and just when the clouds begin to part, fate deals the family, an unthinkable blow, one they never saw coming.