Karl Hiltner

These stories were collected during travels to many destinations, through different cultures and languages, and expatriate years living and working in Europe. They remain memories of specific events by personal connections, letters, or stories told- spanning generations of ordinary people in different parts of the world, sometimes in ordinary and sometimes in extraordinary circumstances, birth, death, and life in-between over generations.

Hiltner writes about the dispossessed or never possessed, the not-first-world countries in which he has lived and worked, the spurned, returned, the almost failed, forgotten, abandoned, misunderstood, those lost in war and perestroika, those who give up and those who do not give up. He tries to write true stories, and when in the first person, the object is not about the “I.” He is just trying to tell the story.

The Hitchhiker and Other True Stories
The Missing Sheep of Coshocton County
Courage                               
The Open Window             
About Life                            
The Violin                              
Slick and Orl                           
Vite Vite, Plus Vite!                  
Little Girl and The Boy Who Couldn't Swim       
The Message                             
Bread Line Budapest                  
Ain'tler Hills                             
A Sunday Dinner and 1956        
The Barber and the Old Man       
The Double Standard Bra           
Crescent Beach                        
Remember Me                           
The King of Cseresznyés Palacsinta                
Beneath the Balboa Tree of Guescheme     
The Orchard                            
Rabbit Hunting                          
The French Professor               
The Hitchhiker