By Pam Walatka

Local-history buffs will be interested in this collection of letters from a young German immigrant, Helmut Dost, who lived on a chicken farm in Los Altos Hills in the late 1940s. “Home Alone in America: Letters Exchanged by a Young German in the U.S. and His Family in Berlin from 1946 to 1955″ (Eagle Editions, 2004) offers firsthand accounts of postwar life in California. The sharp, observant Dost wrote the letters while he was a teenager working to make his own way in his new country and bring his family over.

Dost’s widow, Elizabeth Arnswald Dost, a journalist, translated and organized the communications. She has done a marvelous job of preparing them for publication. They are well organized and annotated where necessary for clarity. Letters from Dost’s family in Germany are interspersed chronologically.

Dost lived for three years on a ranch owned by Otto K. Kern in what is now a residential area of Los Altos Hills. He details the physical aspects of tending chickens and other livestock, and growing apricots. His precision reveals the practical outlook of the physicist he eventually became.

In September 1946, a year after the war’s end, Dost, a 16-year-old American-born German youth, stepped off the ship alone in New York City. His well-meaning parents had sent their gifted teenager alone to the United States to claim the advantages of his American citizenship - and pave the way for their own immigration.

The letters between the teenager and his family in Berlin tell of the young man’s unanticipated struggles and challenges. At the same time, they give intriguing glimpses of life in beleaguered West Berlin during the tense days of the Cold War.

After his stint in Los Altos Hills, Dost served with the U.S. Marine Corps in Korea. The long-delayed reunion with his mother and younger brother, accomplished at last in 1955, freed Helmut to enter the University of California and earn his doctorate in physics.

“Home Alone in America” is available at elizabethadost.com.