Casimir’s mind replayed the morning the row­boat glided from the docks in Gdansk, carrying him, his mother, two bundles, and the man rowing them out to the big ship in the Baltic. He saw four-year-old Anna shrieking and jumping on the docks, screaming, “Mama, take us! Casimir, come back! Take us!” He saw Mrs. Kopicki, the neighbor, turn the child’s face from the sea and into the folds of her skirt. Anna’s blonde curls dangled from  between the woman’s thick fingers.

Casimir nearly toppled the boat when he sprang to his knees to pray for forgiveness and wave a guilty good-bye. Little Krystina, just under two, sat in the crook of Mrs. Kopicki’s arm, uncurling her fingers in a slow, uncertain wave to mother and brother.
     Casimir turned on his mother, hatred in his voice. “Why, Mama! Why can’t we take them?”
 
Nine Bells at the Breaker: An Immigrant’s Story recounts the life of Casimir Turek, a Pennsylvania coal miner haunted by the image of his little sisters who were left behind in Danzig—Gdansk, always, to him. Convinced they were left behind because of him, Casimir eventually leaves his mother and the immigrant miner she married on Ellis Island, and passes himself off as American-born Charlie, hoping to hide his shame until he can arrange to provide a home for his sisters in America.

He lives in dread of the mental illness that has ravaged his family for generations. Bit by bit it overtakes him. Its delusions become jumbled with his superstitions. An encounter with repeating numbers in the timetables at a train station convinces him that he is doomed and that his terrible fate is somehow connected with the Delaware & Hudson Railroad.