Jimmy

Jimmy is a captivating and engaging historical novel that takes place in Germany during its rebuilding years after World War II. Jimmy is a young, inexperienced teenager (only fifteen years old) who arrives in Occupied Germany in 1948 and joins the sole US infantry division there. Jimmy experiences a clash of cultures as the Americans and Germans interact in a master-servant relationship. As Jimmy comes of age in this strange land, he makes many mistakes, from an affair with a woman named Anna Schmidt, a single mother of a two-year-old daughter, to wild and raucous carousing and drinking, but this is not the end for him. After hitting the lowest of lows when he awakens after a night in jail, Jimmy turns over a new leaf with help from unexpected sources. Richards paints a different picture of post-World War II Germany than most Americans are used to seeing. Life on the streets and in the towns of Germany was much different from that described by media and politicians of the time.