Book Review: The Next Ship Home
A Novel of Ellis Island by Heather Webb
According to my family’s oral histories, my great grandparents (both maternal and paternal) migrated to the United States in the decade or so before the turn of last century. They were from Poland and Slovakia, some living in or traveling through Austria-Hungary on their way to America. I know that at least a few of them came through Ellis Island.
My grandmothers and one uncle told me (far too brief) stories about how their parents came to this country, and family members had their names altered because the spelling and pronunciation was too difficult for American inspectors. Despite my young age, I’ve no doubt this helped feed and nurture a love for history, and perhaps is one reason I romanticize the idea of people from foreign lands making the long hard journey to fight for a better life here.
It is also possibly why I (still) believe in the idea of American as a “melting pot” where cultures can both stand out and blend together for the betterment of all. That isn’t to say I believe it was easy for anyone back then or especially today with so many more laws and restrictions.
Over the years, I’ve learned that Ellis Island was far more than just the intake center where desperate and hopeful immigrants registered and passed through to America. Ellis contained dormitories and detainment quarters for those who had to wait for entry or deportation. An entire second island, linked by an earthen bridge, contained a massive hospital where all manner of diseases, injuries, and medical or mental conditions were treated.
More than 12 million people passed through Ellis Island into America, but thousands, who despite the best efforts of public health doctors, also died there. Depending on one’s experiences at Ellis Island, the gateway to America — just beyond Lady Liberty, herself — was either referred to as the Island of Hope or the Island of Tears…
And so, Heather Webb’s “The Next Ship Home: A Novel of Ellis Island” (Amazon: Hardcover | Kindle) tapped into another of my historical fiction sweet spots. The story focuses two sides of the immigration story; “native” Americans (not to be confused with Native Americans, but those) who were descendants of immigrants, with an unhealthy prejudice against and dislike for the new migrants “overwhelming” their communities. Some where just first generation Americans, themselves. Regardless, these natural born citizens held a particular disdain for those arriving from Western Europe — including Italian, Poland, Russia, and Western European Jews.
The two female leads of the story are a young German woman, Alma Brauer, who lives with her family in the Kleindeutschland, a tenement community (klein meaning Little and Deutschland meaning Germany) in Manhattan. She has been raised to see most immigrants — non-German immigrants — as dirty, dumb, lazy, aggressive, immoral or amoral, etc. The other female lead, Francesca Ricci, is a new arrival at Ellis Island from Sicily, Italy, who with her sister has fled poverty and parental abuse.
When Alma is told by her step-father that she is taking a job at Ellis Island to help the family save enough money to move uptown and out of the tenements that are too close to neighborhoods where undesirable immigrants and gangs reside, she is beside herself. She’s been raised to fear and disdain for the immigration port and its arrivals. However, Ellis Island provides a myriad of lessons to both young women whose lives become connected through the work of America’s immigration hub.
Webb pored over research and historical articles to create the real world setting of New York and Ellis Island at the turn of the century, drawing on factual accounts of some real life individuals to help populate the fictionalized world of her characters Alma and Francesca, and the family and friends who surrounded them.
While the specific accounts in this book are fictionalized (to involve the made-up characters), the corruption and scandals that take place in the tale as well as the investigations and changes in policy (to treat immigrants with greater compassion and more humanity) are based on true events and historic figures. Some of the names were changed so Webb could fictionalized their relationship and interactions with her characters.
This novel looks at prejudice, nationalism, and personal identity development when those ideas are challenged by world experiences. Two intertwined themes I noticed relate to how one defines home and family, and how those definitions can change. Much like Webb’s novel “Last Christmas in Paris,” which I read last year, I truly adored not just her thoughtful and rich storytelling, but her writing style as well as her descriptive and (appropriately) expansive vocabulary.
Although this is an historical fiction novel, it manages to relate and allude to many true stories about Ellis Island and the actions and attitudes of people during the era, which may simultaneously call one to see (and question) the similarities of some modern attitudes related to immigrants who look to America for help and refuge from oppression, abuse, poverty, and worse.
This work of historical fiction as well as the author’s notes engage and invite the reader (or at least this reader) to dig into the story of this unique place and to learn about the important role Ellis Island played in America’s history.
One such documentary you might check out on Amazon Prime is “The Forgotten Island,” which talks about the second island (constructed with earth excavated to create the subway system) where the hospital buildings resided.
