There are some great novels out there, historical fiction about immigrants — I’ll add to this list as I go along. Here are just a few I’ve come across:
Accordion Crimes by E. Annie Proulx
Blindspot by Jane Kamensky and Jill Lepore
Away by Amy Bloom
Can you recommend others?
Another research read: The Last of the Mohicans.
Why? First, let me say Mark Twain’s derision and mockery of James Fenimore Cooper’s writing style has some merit. (See Twain’s The American Claimant.) Cooper does a terrible job with women, not to mention secondary characters in general, who drop out and reappear at the author’s convenience. Nevertheless, the book Pfälzer in Amerika notes that Cooper’s Hawk-eye was modeled after Johann Adam Hartmann, an immigrant from the Palatinate (same area as my greatgreatgrandfather) who fought on the colonists’ side in the Mohawk Valley Indian uprising of 1777. “[Hartmann’s] sure aim and his vigilance saved the lives of many of his fellow countrymen. With poetic licence James Fenimore Cooper, Hartmann’s neighbour, incorporated much of the life story of this Indian fighter in his The Last of the Mohicans.” (p.60)
Mohicans was a quick read, and impressed me again how 80 years later, in 1857, when my greatgreatgrandfather arrived in Ohio, that style of life was already ancient history.