Maria Trapp published this book in 1959 - perhaps to capitalize on the debut of the Broadway production that year. Lotte Lehmann - who discovered the Trapp family - wrote a jacket blurb. "If a book can make one both weep and laugh - what more can one ask?" Two selections are worth quoting:
All in all we visited the Deep South many times - enough to realize that the valley of separation still waits for a bridge, and to pray for a bridge where none exists so far. But in those early days we could only drive on in the bus, bewildered by a side of life which, as Europeans, we did not understand, and as Christians we could not approve.
And on being a refugee:
A refugee is not just someone lacking in money and everything else. A refugee is vulnerable to the slightest touch: he has lost his country, his friends, his earthly belongings. He is a stranger, sick at heart. He is suspicious; he feels misunderstood. If people smile, he thinks they ridicule him; if they look serious, he thinks they don't like him. He is a full-grown tree in the dangerous process of being transplanted, with the chance of possibly not being able to take root in the new soil.
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