Wilderness — Robert Penn Warren

In the summer of 1863, Adam Rosenzweig has left a Bavarian ghetto and sailed for America to join the Union Army. Fired by the revolutionary idealism of mid-nineteenth century Europe, he hopes to aid a cause which he believes to be as simple as he knows to be just. But thwarted by the discovery of a physical deformity which he had hoped to conceal, he must try other means to find his "truth." Wilderness id the story of Adam's adventures in America, which from the moment he sets foot on shore demand a profound revision of his view of the world and of his place in it. In the fast-moving narrative, full of surprising events and extraordinary characters, we have the story of Adam's growth, by experience, to a deeper understanding of himself and of the world he must accept before he can take his proper place in it - and of that idealism by which, as he rediscovers in the end, he must live.