Arlington Moore, First Machinist Mate of the RTS Selkirk, is shipwrecked in a foreign land. Separated from his crewmates, it’s taken him nearly four years to physically adapt. He’s happy with his isolation and has found a new home in a fishing village, a purpose to his life, and the love of a family he’s never known. When the matriarch of the village orders him to seek out his crewmates, he reluctantly obeys, if only to find the woman he still loves. But then Dr. Barcelona Cortes finds him. She brings with her a three-year-old child and is pursued by imperial guards from a nearby kingdom, intent on returning her to her prison.

For nearly a century, the symbol of the American melting pot enjoyed considerable popularity. Bruce M. Stave and John F. Sutherland explore this and other concepts in an oral history comprising the voices of European immigrants to Connecticut. Both practicing oral historians, their interviews join others conducted by the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s, providing readers with a perspective of at least three generations of immigrant experience, including the role that the family unit played, both economically and socially. Of special interest is the place held by immigrant women in the new world, as traditional relationships between men and women, and within families, began to change.