"A novel of satisfying depth and breadth, written in good, clean, forceful prose."― Chicago Tribune A new edition of the New York Times bestselling second book in Howard Fast's powerful historical family saga, Second Generation follows the Lavette immigrants through the challenges of the Great Depression and World War II. Desperate for independence and scornful of the hypocrisy of the upper class, Barbara Lavette is determined to make her own way in the world. After abandoning her privileged life in San Francisco to disguise herself as a poor volunteer down on the wharf, Barbara journeys to France to report on the onset of Nazi terror and the coming of World War II. But when tragedy strikes deep at the heart of the life Barbara has built for herself in Europe, she is forced to return to San Francisco heartbroken and alone and face the family she ran away from. Continuing the epic Lavette family saga, Howard Fast's fascinating historical fiction vividly depicts the struggles to persevere in Immigrant America. Born in 1914, Howard Fast published over 53 novels, including numerous New York Times Bestsellers. His writing has been praised by the New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and Time magazine. His most famous novels included Spartacus, Freedom Road, My Glorious Brothers, and The Immigrants series. Pete Lomas' mackerel drifter was an old, converted, coal-fired steam tug of a hundred and twenty-two tons, purchased as war surplus in 1919. It cost him so little then that he was able to sell its oversized engine for scrap and replace it with a modern, oil-burning plant. He named it Golden Gate , packed his wife and kids and household goods into it, and sailed from San Francisco Bay down to San Pedro. There he rented a berth for the tug and went into the mackerel business. His wife suffered from asthma, and her doctor determined that the San Francisco area was too damp. Lomas then decided to make the move to Los Angeles County, and he bought a house in Downey. He laid out his drift nets with a three-man crew, and until the Depression came, in the thirties, he did well, and even after 1929, he managed to make a decent living out of his boat and to pay his crew living wages as well. Years before, he had worked for Dan Lavette as the captain of his fleet of crabbing boats on Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco, and when, in 1931, he stumbled on Lavette on the dock at San Pedro, broke and hungry, he offered him a job. Now, in 1934, Dan had been working for Lomas steadily for three years. Today, the first of June 1934, Dan Lavette came off the mackerel boat at ten o'clock in the morning and got into his 1930 Ford sedan to drive to his home in Westwood, where he lived with his second wife, an American-born Chinese woman named May Ling, their son, Joseph, and her parents. Their small house was a few blocks from the University of California campus in Los Angeles, where May Ling worked at the library. Dan was a big man, six feet and one inch in height, heavily built but without fat, broad in the shoulders, his skin tanned and weatherbeaten by the sun and the salt water. He had a good head of curly hair, mostly gray, dark eyes under straight brows, high cheekbones, and a wide, full mouth. To the two men who comprised the crew of the mackerel boat along with Dan and Pete Lomas, Lavette was a plain, soft-spoken, easygoing, and competent fisherman. He never lost his temper and he never complained, regardless of how brutal or backbreaking the conditions were, and that in itself was most unusual among fishermen. Of his background, they knew only that years before he had fished with Pete Lomas in San Francisco Bay. One of them was a Chicano, the other an Italian who spoke little English, and they were not inordinately curious. As for Lomas, who knew a great deal more about Dan Lavette, he kept his peace. The Chicano, whose name was Juan Gonzales, while only twenty-two years old, was alert enough to realize that Dan Lavette was unlike any of the other fishermen on the wharf. He said to him one day, "Danny, how come a man like you, he's satisfied to pull fish?" Dan shrugged. "I'm a fisherman. Always been one." "You'll be an old man soon. I'll be goddamned if I spend my life on a fishing boat, take home twenty, thirty dollars a week, and end up a poor bum on the dock." "I've been a bum on the dock," Dan replied. "I like fishing better." Driving home today, Dan thought of that. Did he actually like what he did, enjoy what he did? It had been a bad night, cold and wet out on the water, and he had wrenched a muscle in his shoulder. His whole body ached, and he thought longingly of the hot bath that he would climb into the moment he set foot in the house. He supposed he was as happy as a man might be. He had made his peace with himself. Nevertheless, he was still a fisherman who took home between twenty and thirty dollars a week, and he was forty-five years old. The morning mist and overcast had cleared by t