Images of Karl May's America are no doubt familiar to most readers of German literature. Who doesn't recall the stories of “der Greenhorn” in the American West, shooting, surveying, hunting buffalo, and taming wild mustangs? Who can forget the noble savage Winnetou and his lifelong companion Old Shatterhand? Even those who have not read Winnetou likely know Karl May, former crook and swindler and arguably the most widely read German author of all time. Although he wrote prolifically about the United States, May only visited North America once; his westernmost destinations were Buffalo, New York, and Niagara Falls, and even this 1908 trip occurred long after his classic tales of the American West were published. Karl May's America thus has very little to do with the “real” America, serving instead as a blank canvas onto which German dreams of settlement, conquest, and masculine freedom are projected.

But what about Klara May's America? Klara May, Karl May's widow, saw and experienced more of the United States and the American West than her husband ever did, documenting it in a little-known 1931 work called Mit Karl May durch Amerika (With Karl May through America). This work, part memoir, part travelogue, recounts Klara May's 1930 trip through the United States, when she traveled from the East Coast to the West and back again. A review of the work on the online discussion board of the Karl May Foundation sums up the work thus: “Insgesamt: wenig Karl May, viel Klara May, und das ist nun leider wirklich fatal” (All in all: little Karl May, lots of Klara May, and that is truly fatal).