Publication of The Extraordinary Dr Epstein is getting closer, but delayed until March while I wait for a brilliant cover. Meanwhile, here is the blurb that will appear on Amazon.
Ephraim Epstein is an astonishing 19th c emigrant so bound to truth that he constantly reinvents himself, even at the cost of what he holds most dear. Starting on the fateful day he is told he must marry his cousin, this novel tells the true life of a brilliant, incorrigible man of conviction. Doctor, farmhand, missionary, sailor, scholar, journalist, university founder, Jew and Christian, Russian and American, he spoke seven languages, had two wives, fathered ten children, one of whom died in a terrible tragedy…
Here’s my question — do I keep it ’emigrant’ because he emigrated from Belarus? Or make it ‘immigrant’ because for the rest of his life he was an immigrant who entered into America (and other places)?
The Extraordinary Dr Epstein 
I think “emigrant” is correct because the definition shows intent: “a person who leaves their own country in order to settle permanently in another”. He deliberately left Belarus to deliberately live in America.
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Thanks, CB — I agree, but then once he left, Ephraim was an immigrant in America, and everywhere else. I ‘spose it depends which chapter of his life/the book you are reading.
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