Katherine Anne Porter claimed in later years that during the twenties, when many American writers were hastening to Europe, she felt she had no business there and went to Mexico instead. In fact, she had tried to go to Europe as early as 1918 but was always prevented by financial, medical, and personal obstacles. In August 1931, after her first collection of stories, Flowering Judas (1930), had been highly acclaimed and she had received a Guggenheim Fellowship, she finally realized her dream. With her companion, Eugene Pressly, she traveled from Mexico, where she had spent the past eighteen months, to Germany. (The voyage on the German ship the S.S. Werra provided the basis for her 1962 novel, Ship of Fools.) She intended to go to France, but visa complications prevented her disembarkation, and she was carried on to Bremerhaven. Once settled in a Berlin pension, she decided to stay there and...