Michael Harm is a farmer's son in the Bavarian Rhineland who dreams of
excitement and freedom-the sort of life enjoyed by Uncas, the hero in
his favorite novel, The Last of the Mohicans. Every day Michael toils
beside his brother in the vineyards wishing he could be a blacksmith, a
singer, or an adventurer. One day the Harm family receives a letter from
America offering a blacksmithing apprenticeship in a relative's
Cleveland, Ohio wagon-making shop to the eldest son. Michael begs to
take his brother's place, and at age fifteen, leaves his family behind
for America. On a storm-tossed Atlantic crossing, he meets Charles
Rauch, the son of a Cleveland wagon-maker, his future rival in
carriage-making and love. Michael arrives in an America he can barely
comprehend, confronting riots in New York, anti-immigrant bigotry in
Cleveland, and his uncle, a cruel blacksmith master. Michael struggles
through his indenture, inspired by rags-to-riches stories such as that
of presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln. He receives his freedom dues
just as war threatens to destroy the country he now calls home. It is
not the Civil War, but Cleveland's post-war Gilded Age, that forces
Michael to face his greatest challenge-an accelerating machine age
destined to wipe out his livelihood forever. Populated by characters
both historical and invented, The Last of the Blacksmiths is a tale of
the disruption and dispersal of an immigrant family, the twilight of the
artisan crafts, and the efforts of each generation to shape its destiny.
