Oilcloth Stories
by Carol Dean Henn

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When immigrants from Central Europe arrived in America in the late 1800s and early 1900s, they often came to cities like Bethlehem, Pennsylvania – cities bursting with the new energies and opportunities of industrialization, and with the challenges of assimilating dozens of cultures into what had been pastoral communities only a few decades before. For most immigrants, industrial working conditions were harsh and brutal, and living conditions were not much better. But the immigrants – Windish, Hungarians, Slovaks, and others – stayed and made lives for themselves … lives that reached from nineteenth-century famine in Europe and the horrors of World War I to man’s landing on the moon and the dawn of the computer age. It is in the stories of individual lives that this immigrant journey can be glimpsed – in everyday stories, universally human stories – stories told around a table covered in oilcloth.

oilclothstories.com

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"Carol Henn weaves masterful tales ... that will delight readers everywhere." -Adriana Trigiani New York Times best-selling author of Big Stone Gap

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CAROL HENN grew up in South Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, at a time when many of the area’s immigrants from Central Europe, including her maternal grandparents, were alive to share their stories. Retired as the CEO of the Lehigh Valley Community Foundation, Carol has worked in both business and non-profit settings. Under the auspices of the Foundation for a Civil Society and the U.S. Information Agency, she served as a visiting consultant in Central Europe, meeting with non-profit leaders and government officials in former Soviet nations to strengthen philanthropic organizations, community initiatives, and public-private partnerships. A graduate of Moravian College with an Honors degree in Political Science, Carol is an artist as well as a writer, with drawings and paintings exhibited regionally as well as in New York City. One of her drawings is part of the permanent collection of the Theatre Museum in Copenhagen, Denmark. Internationally certified as an open water scuba diver, Carol also enjoys travel, gardening, art, and antiques. Her writing has appeared in regional and national publications. Oilcloth Stories is Carol’s first book, and she has four other books and a screenplay in various stages of development.

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Contributors

Author

Carol Dean Henn

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