The Vision of Emma Blau A Novel Author:Ursula Hegi If you knew that you could experience a significant love once in your life, would you want these years at the beginning or at the end? The Vision of Emma Blau is the luminous epic of a bicultural family filled with passion and aspirations, tragedy and redemption. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Stefan Blau flees Burgdorf, a sm... more »all town in Germany, and comes to America in search of the vision that has grafted itself to his mind so tenaciously that he's dreamed of it every night. The novel closes nearly a century later with Stefan's granddaughter, Emma, and the legacy of his dream, a once-grand apartment house filled with the hidden truths of its inhabitants both past and present. Ursula Hegi creates a fascinating picture of immigrants in America: their dreams and disappointments, the challenges of assimilation, the frailty of language and its transcendence, the love that bonds generations and the cultural wedges that drive them irrevocably apart. Told with her celebrated prose and clear-eyed characterization, The Vision of Emma Blau is Ursula Hegi's most powerful and absorbing work.« less
I did not like this book. There was sex and death on every page, and the ending was depressing. I admit Hegi writes well and creates interesting characters, but there was nothing in this book to make me want to read anything else of hers.