Annie's Journey

By N. A. Nation

Annie was scared when her family and friends were forced to leave their homes when she was fourteen.

It was 1904 when her parents traveled across Europe and the Atlantic Ocean to New York City with her four siblings.
This historical fiction reminisces the trials all immigrants made in the early 1900s.

• Language: English
• Publisher: N. A. Nation
• Release date: Nov 29, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223315544

Book preview

Annie’s Journey

A Tale of Endurance

All rights reserved

ISBN:  9798223315544

Copyright © 2021

Published 2021

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N. A. Nation

Acknowledgements

I want to thank those that gave me support. They are by first names only as they know who they are:

Shirley and Michael

Copyright

No part of this story may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the publisher.

This is a work of fictionalized non-fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are actual but used in a fictitious manner. This is a fictionalized account of a young woman’s journey to America. Since there are many gaps in Annie’s life,  most of the events here are fictionalized from true occurrences.

Location Galicia in Europe.svg

Solbergj

The nucleus of historic Galicia

Preface

Imagine if you will, a 14 year old girl and her family leaving the only home they ever knew. Her father lost his job. The family of seven walked, rode, took the train hundreds of miles to catch a ship. People were packed in the cargo hold called steerage. Men wanted her, prostitutes enticed her. There were no bathrooms for the four to six week ocean trip except for sewage buckets. Dysentery and typhus from bad water and rotten food claimed many. They camped in a small bunkbed cubicle, stacked two to three high, taking turns when to sleep if they could in the stench permeating the bowels of the ship. This is Annie’s Journey.

Table of Contents

Moving Boxes

Galicia

Packing

Journey to Rotterdam

To the Train

Rotterdam

The Storm

New York City

Reflections

About the Author

Books by A. Nation

Character List

Moving Boxes

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My husband and I just moved from our apartment to a three-bedroom home in the suburbs. I called my sister on my cell phone. She said her and her husband could come later and help us. When the moving truck with our belongings arrived, we had to unload many of the boxes as fast as we could.

Honey, where do these go? my husband asked carrying in two boxes at a time.

I don’t know. Just put them in the spare room. We’ll have to hurry. We are paying the movers by the hour.

My sister and her husband arrived and began helping us carry the boxes into the house. By late afternoon, all of the boxes were unloaded and the moving truck left.

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That was a month ago. Now, with anticipation, I opened the small bedroom door and gazed at the daunting stacks of filled boxes before me. One by one, I tackled each box and found places to store our possessions throughout the house. I was making progress until I came across one particular box I had labeled, My Dad’s. I lifted the edge of the lid and opened it.

My father had passed several years ago and most of the items inside were photos and documents from the funeral. Some of the photos were of my mother’s family. She died before my father did. I never met her family, especially her mother, Annie.