For six hundred years the Catholic Land of Gottschee has endured as a remote outpost of the House of Austria, the outermost point of the Holy Roman Empire, a "linguistic Island" of medieval German in present-day Slovenia. It has withstood the Bosnian Warlord and Napoleon, but German catastrophe in World War I brings tension with the local Slavs to a simmer, hastening the exodus of educated Gottscheers.
Edwin Stalzer, the author, is born at the boiling point, the moment of Gottschee's final tragedy. Life's Journey of a Refugee takes you through his life in an Austrian refugee camp from 1945 to 1952, his escape to America, and his triumphant battle for the "American Dream".