The following is another excerpt from my upcoming book with the working title, Cowboy from Prague:               Less than one month after landing in America with my two-word English vocabulary—“sank you”—my father hit me with a bombshell. “Tommy is going away for three weeks to be a summer-camp counselor in…

Opening chapter of my upcoming book about the immigrant experience in America: “Come on, swim to me!” Water clogged my ears and I could barely hear my father, who had thrown me into the middle of Labe (Elbe) River in Czechoslovakia. Although I was nine years old, I had not learned to swim and now…