iUniverse, 2006

If ever there was a compelling story for an epic film, the newly published novel Jadwiga’s Crossing, by Dunkirk, New York natives Aloysius A. Lutz and his son Richard J. Lutz, fits the bill perfectly. The novel is the story of the “great migration” of a married couple, Paul Adamik and Jadwiga Wdowiak Adamik, from Poland to America in the late 19th century. With other Poles and Germans, they travel under extreme duress in steerage class aboard an old wind-powered passenger ship at the time of the transition from sail to steam. Theirs is a roller coaster ride across the Atlantic, beset by severe storms, underfed and having to provide for the birth of children among the animals accompanying them. Dr. Deborah Silverman, Buffalo State College professor and author of Polish-American Folklore, tells us, “Readers of Jadwiga’s Crossing are introduced to…folklore from several regions of then-partitioned Poland, as well as the tensions that existed between Poles and the three nations that occupied Poland in the nineteenth century: Prussia, Russia and Austria.” These immigrants had great personal confidence in their own ability to survive and thrive in America in a political and commercial environment unlike anything the world had previously seen. Paul and Jadwiga show this confidence as they arrive and find work in Dunkirk. Well worth reading, particularly by those who live in this region and have an interest in their own 19th-century ancestors.