It is 1893 and the first generation of immigrants who came to America for the promise of free land and a good life for their children have finally achieved their dreams. They labored hard on the land and now have a bountiful heritage to pass on to the next generation. However, many of the young people aren't interested in becoming farmers--they have aspirations of their own. Thorliff Bjorklund has been writing stories and plays since he was a young...

Mary Martha travels to the town of Blessing in the Dakota Territory to visit her brother and his family, and her growing love for the community--especially Pastor John Solberg, has her entertaining thoughts of staying on, but she is called back to Missouri to care for her ailing mother, leaving her to hope that good-bye does not mean forever.

Nils wants to grow up and be a cowboy, but when he wears the beautiful knitted woolen stockings his grandmother has sent him from Norway, his school friends tease him for being different and a sissy.

Nineteen-year-old Rebecca Baard has experienced more than her share of sorrow, and now she is afraid to open her heart to love. Rebecca's friends set out to remedy the situation, concocting social events to attract all the eligible bachelors in Blessing, and advising her in the use of her feminine wiles.

During World War II, while his father is in Europe fighting and his mother is working in Chicago, a five-year-old boy goes to live with his grandmother in a rural Norwegian American community in Minnesota. Based on events from the author's life.

"An audacious novel of feminine rage about one of the most prolific female serial killers in American history-and the men who drove her to it. They whisper about her in Chicago. Men come to her with their hopes, their dreams-their fortunes. But no one sees them leave. No one sees them at all after they come to call on the Widow of La Porte. The good people of Indiana may have their suspicions, but if those fools knew what she'd given up, what was...

A young boy growing up on a northern Minnesota farm describes the scenes around him and recounts his old Norwegian uncle's tales of an almost mythological logging past.

In 1944, a thirteen-year-old girl grapples with the discovery that "Pa" isn't her biological father, experiences her first romance, and faces hardships dealt to friends in Brooklyn's Norwegian community.