SAILING IN KANSAS is a poignant memoir of a Jewish childhood in Leavenworth, Kansas, a small, dying community, in the 1950s. It is also the story of the author's father, an upperclass Berlin Jew, once an avid recreational sailor on Berlin's Wannsee, who arrived in Kansas a penniless refugee. It is a tale of a clash of cultures and a child's encounter with life and death in a unique setting.