When I was about halfway through writing the first draft of the Adelsverein Trilogy, my father - who had read every word to date - confessed to being rather confused about the various characters, and how they were related. So, I constructed a family tree - actually several family trees, as I was juggling the members of not less than four interlinked and interrelated families, over a period of fifty years.

I didn't want to put the family trees into the first two books, because I was afraid that it would just give away too many plot points. Certain events are supposed to come as a surprise to the reader, after all - and I had spent much time, carefully constructing events so as to keep readers in something of suspense.

But as Dad pointed out - it was not as easy for the readers to keep all these people straight. So - into the last pages of The Harvesting, and into the last pages of the Complete Adelsverein Trilogy were the two family trees, of the American Becker-Vining constellation, and that of the German Steinmetz-Richter clan.

The Beckers are ethnic German-Americans, long established in the Brandywine area of Pennsylvania, but the Becker patriarch, Alois, removes to Texas in the 1820s. There, his daughter Margaret marries the schoolteacher, Horace Vining - likewise a long-established family in America, but in Boston ... and of a somewhat higher social class.

The Steinmetzes and the Richters are small peasant farmers, from a small village near Ulm, although their patriarch, Christian "Vati" has managed to get an education and a trade as a clockmaker. His daughter Liesel has married the youngest Richter son, and so they travel to Texas together, as part of a group sponsered by the Mainzer Adelsverein. There, Vati's stepdaughter, Magda Vogel meets and eventually marries Alois Becker's younger son, Carl.

And there are - and may well be many more - familial links. I'll get around to writing them, soon. For now, this should do.