During the late sixties, the America that Herman Hesse thought would never be receptive to his works came alive with the counterculture and Americans began to become aware of Hesse first through Siddhartha and Narcissus and Goldmund. In Herman Hesse, a volume first published in the series Writers for the Seventies, Ed Casebeer makes the claim that American readers need Hesse who believed that the universe makes sense and that the best way to realize that affirmation is to realize yourself. By his novels and by his life, Herman Hesse provided the assurance and guidance of a man who sought...

In the spring of 1945, a young boy in the Pacific Northwest will make a life-or-death decision. Every morning, Herman "Hermy" Auerbach awakens to the pre-dawn song of canaries. The porch where he sleeps contains dozens of the songbirds. Outside, in the wider world, the Second World War enters its final, bloody months. Hermy comes to the Williams' house under protest after his parents' divorce, a result of his father leaving home initially to pursue his impossible dream of becoming an intelligence officer. Herman's mother, remarried to a sailor, abandons her son to move across the country and...