Finding Pascasio

by Herminio Schmidt

Overview

Four-year-old 'Wolfi' Herminio is happily growing up in Berlin with his six-year-old brother Roni, his German mother Klara and his Spanish journalist father Pascasio. But on the day that Hitler invades Poland, a panicked Pascasio rushes home, burns all his papers, and then flees Germany, leaving his family behind and severing all contacts with them. This bewildering abandonment thoroughly derails the lives of the little boys, just as they are faced with the advent of WWII and all its terrors and privation.

As a young man, Herminio sets out to solve the mystery of this defining event. Why Pascasio left? What happened to him? A lifelong journey to find the answers becomes a struggle of hope, suspicion, disappointment, and shocking discoveries that will take him to Franco's Spain, Castro's Cuba, and the remote Canary Islands. In a story that reads like an engaging thriller, Herminio's search will also lead him into adventures such as working for a spy agency, becoming an unwitting accessory to a plot to blow up the Statue of Liberty, and a ping-pong game with Fidel Castro himself.

Juxtaposed against some of the most pivotal events of the twentieth century, this fascinating and deeply personal story examines the effects of buried secrets and old wounds, and how they resonate down through generations. While Herminio starts out damaged by his father's disappearance, his quest reveals that this moment is central to the man he has become.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781525524653
Publisher:	FriesenPress
Publication date:	08/28/2018
Pages:	654
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.56(d)

About the Author

Herminio Schmidt was born in Berlin and immigrated to Canada as a young man. He has taught at universities in Winnipeg and Waterloo. A playwright and a frequent contributor to international magazines and newspapers, he has also published a book on the German writer, Heinrich von Kleist. Schmidt and his wife, Linda, reside in Kitchener, Ontario, where they enjoy the stimulating environment of a vibrant university community. They like yoga, skiing, hiking, biking and travelling.

Editorial Reviews

2018-11-21

Schmidt recounts his lifelong quest to understand his father, a journalist who fled Germany on the eve of World War II, in this investigative memoir.

Schmidt's father, Pascasio Trujillo, was not like other fathers in 1930s Berlin. He didn't live with Schmidt and his brother, Roni, or their mother, Klara, though his infrequent visits were a source of joy. Schmidt knew that his father had come from La Gomera in the Canary Islands and that he had a mother and sister in Cuba. One day in 1939, Pascasio arrived abruptly at the apartment and said they needed to leave Germany immediately. Klara refused, so Pascasio went without them. "That Friday morning changed me," remembers Schmidt. "I would search for an answer most of my life. I wanted my father back. Even after a lifetime, I still hear Pascasio tearing down the stairs, two and three steps at a time." He would encounter his father again, years later, though his search for answers took much longer and crisscrossed the globe, from Hitler's Berlin to Nazi-occupied Poland to Franco's Spain, Castro's Cuba, the border-crossing highways of Central America, the safe haven of Canada, and ultimately to the Canary Islands of Pascasio's birth. Along the way, Schmidt's search for his father becomes one for himself as the absence of one man becomes the crucible in which another is forged. Schmidt writes in an elegant, thoughtful prose that captures the author's quiet but insistent pining for understanding: "In Madrid, I got off the plane and slowly regained my bearings. From Pascasio's last short letter, I had the impression that he looked forward to seeing me. I was sure he would be curious about my experience meeting his Cuban mother. I was so surprised when he did not ask." The book is long, and not every chapter is thrilling, but Schmidt provides a first-person account of so many fascinating times and places that it more than makes up for the lulls. The enigma of Pascasio becomes secondary to the experience of viewing major developments of the 20th century through one man's personal development.

A unique, often marvelous memoir of discovery.

Kirkus Reviews