One of the most enlightening novels about interracial, intercultural love ever written, Her First American is the story of twenty-one-year-old Ilka Weissnix"s adventures in America, having survived Hitler and the war. On a trip to the West to explore her new home, Ilka finds "her first American," Carter Bayoux, a troubled black intellectual. Through his eyes she sees America in all its hilarity and barbarity. Her First American has been hailed as a classic of American fiction. Lore Segal employs what The New York Times calls a "mixture of dollery and catastrophe" to achieve an exhilarating balance of humor and pathos.