Above the Waterline

In the winter of 1957, a brave, young Dutch couple pack a few possessions, bundle up their five children, and walk away from everything they know. They're starting over again in the United States. This is the personal account of two people wrestling with a big decision and a long adventure. It collects the most vivid of their memories, the fond and the funny ones as well as the ones they would have been happy to forget. It spans the purely random and the truly remarkable. And it recalls a very different time not all that long ago. Together, John and Trudi Schouten prevailed across two lifetimes - the distinctly different ones they lived on opposite ends of an American immigration.