The gently breathtaking life story of a farmer's boy who discovered his passion for reading early on and imagined a life beyond his hometown's confines. One who earned extra money in the evenings as a weaver and shingle maker to buy books, viewed with suspicion in the village for his love of reading. One who wrote novels and became a political publicist, admired in Leipzig and opposed by the clerical power circles of his Vorarlberg homeland. The thirty-year-old wrote about a difficult youth, a great love, and a hard-won calling. A reminder of the joy of reading. In simple, powerful language that reflects his classic readings. Emotional, devoted to life, and socially critical: an ethnologically precise look at beautiful customs and dull backwardness, at the joys and hardships in mountainous nature. And always: on the possible improvement of human conditions.