The Settlers by Vilhelm Moberg

The Settlers focuses on Karl Oskar and Kristina Nilsson as they struggle to prosper on their new farm in Minnesota during the 1850s. Kristina, coping with a feeling of loss for Sweden and the difficulty of adopting to a new land, draws strength from a new-found spirituality. Karl Oskar brings more land under cultivation and harvests rye, wheat, and corn. Together they survive blizzards, grasshopper plagues, wildcat speculation in currency, and self-righteous neighbors. With friends they rejoice in the arrival of more Swedes, building a church, moving into their new house, even planting a small flower garden. Karl Oskar's brother, Robert, falls victim to gold fever and with his friend Arvid Petterson faces an arduous journey on the California Trail.

Paperback
399 pages
ISBN: 978-0-87351-321-0

About the author: Vilhelm Moberg, author of more than thirty novels, histories, and plays, is one of Sweden’s greatest writers of the twentieth century. Moberg’s most enduring works are his four Emigrant Novels, which portray the joys and tragedies of daily life for nineteenth-century Swedish pioneers in America.

Image description: The illustration on the cover has a green-striped border around a crème-colored rectangle. At the top of that rectangle the author’s name is printed, with the title underneath. The subtitle is printed in white letters on a small red banner beneath that. Below that, the cover features a black-and-white illustration of a farmhouse, with a donkey eating grass in the yard.