Summary

In Chapter 1, “The Last Link,” Fidelis Waldvogel returned home to Ludwigsruhe after the great war. The ordinariness of home troubled him. He tried dismissing his memories of the war so they would not “sabotage his thinking” (2).

The following day, Fidelis visited his late best friend Johannes’s fiancé Eva to tell her Johannes was dead. She crumbled into Fidelis’s arms. Fidelis realized she was pregnant. He had promised Johannes to marry her. When they had sex after their wedding, Fidelis realized “he was meant to love” (7).

Shortly thereafter, Fidelis encountered sliced bread from America. Eager to start a life in a place that could make something so wonder, Fidelis sailed to New York City “with a suitcase full of his father’s . . . smoked sausage” (7). His father had been a master butcher, and passed his secrets to Fidelis. “It was 1922 and Eva’s...