I first learned of Hunky: The Immigrant Experience by Nicholas Stevensson Karas (1931-2013) while attending a Rusyn seminar.  The book is described as a novel, and fiction is not my preferred genre, but it’s much more accurate to call most of the book historical fiction, while the end appears to be completely non-fiction.

Biographical background on the author mentions that he was befriended by James Michener and encouraged to write “what he knew about.”  Mr. Karas must also have been influenced by the length of Mr. Michener’s books, as Hunky: The Immigrant Experience is a massive 563 pages long and tells the story of three generations of East European Rusnaks (e.g. Rusyns) from the Carpathian Mountain area of Europe, which today includes portions of Poland, Slovakia, Romania and Ukraine, who settled in Pennsylvania to work the mines.

“Hunky” is not a term I ever heard until the 1980s. I belonged to a local Slovak-American Genealogy Society. At one of the meetings, some of the older gentlemen, second generation Americans, shared memories of being called “hunkies” in their youth.

“Hunky” is an ethnic slur used to describe, en masse, the Slavic immigrants who arrive from the Austro-Hungarian (Hungarian, hence hunky) Empire beginning in the late 19th century, displacing the earlier German, Irish and English immigrants from jobs in the mills and the mines.

Knowing what I did about my own Rusyn great grandparents and my grandparents, both born in America, I was immediately drawn into Mr. Kara’s story.

The book opens with a Preface explaining that two stories are being told – that of a Rusnak family and their immigrant experience, but also of thousands of other Eastern Europeans who came to America for a better life, one with a future that offered more than a oppressed peasant life which had changed little through the centuries.

Chapter 1 begins in 1887, describing the life of Mr. Karas’s ancestors back in the “old country” and the events that brought on the decision to leave all that they knew for an opportunity for a better future.

Much historical background is woven through the story, helping to clarify and explain the effects of history on the Rusnak people, both in Europe and America. We experience the struggles, successes and failures of the immigrants, some of whom were so discouraged that they returned to Europe.

I, myself, grew up in the 1950s – just far enough removed from the Rusyn immigrant arrivals to be unaware of the amount of courage and determination it took for people to say goodbye to their families and way of life to start over.

They quickly learned that America’s streets were not lined with gold, but, with the hard work put in by the first generation, life circumstances would improve for the second and third generations.

This is the story that Mr. Karas tells so well through the experiences of his family.

I mentioned at the beginning of this review that most of the book is historical fiction. However, Mr. Karas ends his story with his real life visit back to the ‘old country” to learn for himself what happened to his extended family and the villages where they had lived for centuries.

His travel back to the homeland brings the story of his family full circle with an unexpected twist at the very end.

I loved this book and read it in less than a week. I’d highly recommend it, not only for Rusyn-Americans, but for anyone with a curiosity about the push-pull factors that drew so many immigrants to America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

My only two criticisms are that there are a number of spelling/grammar errors, which an editor would have corrected, and, being a genealogist, I would love to have found an family tree in the illustrations to help keep track of the many characters/real people in the story. That said, Mr. Karas did an excellent job describing the immigrant experience.

Hunky: The Immigrant Experience by Nicholas Stevensson Karas was published in 2009 by 1st Books. It is available online for under $20.00.