Frank Carlson Library

"Conflating her own childhood experiences with those of a celebrated Wagnerian soprano of her day, Willa Cather here introduces Thea Kronborg, a Scandinavian-American singer who rises from a one-story town in Colorado to the Metropolitan Opera House. Along the way she learns her own capacity for the rigorous demands of artistic excellence, and how few of her colleagues are willing to sacrifice ordinary vanities for exacting professional standards....

Considered one of Sweden's greatest 20th-century writers, Vilhelm Moberg created Karl Oskar and Kristina Nilsson to portray the joys and tragedies of daily life for early Swedish pioneers in America. His consistently faithful depiction of these humble people's lives is a major strength of the Emigrant Novels. Moberg's extensive research in the papers of Swedish emigrants in archival collections, including the Minnesota Historical Society, enabled...

Ten-year-old Kirsten is proud and excited when she finds a bee tree full of honey, one of the natural treasures of her Minnesota frontier world, but she exposes herself to great danger by trying to harvest the honey by herself.

Relates the experiences of two young brothers and their family, immigrants from Sweden, from their arrival in New York through the journey to their new home in Minnesota.

When genealogist Torie O'Shea gets an invitation from her favorite aunt, Sissy, to come and spend some time with her in Minnesota she jumps at the chance. She piles her husband and her father-in-law into the car, leaving her two daughters in the care of her mother back home in Missouri, and hits the road, looking forward to some relaxation and some family bonding. Once they arrive, Torie finds out that her aunt's invitation was not so innocent: Sissy...

On a Minnesota farm in the mid 1800's, the hard working members of the Larson family find time to celebrate Kirsten's tenth birthday.

This is a fictionalized account of Charlotta Johnson's journey from Sweden to Kansas in 1868.--Pref.