A heartwarming story based on the life of Christina Gunnerson. After adventures mixed with hardships during her early years in Norway, she suddenly lost her father and older brother. At the age of 19 she journeyed by herself to America to carve out a better life. One of the few women homesteaders she faced many challenges on the unforgiving prairie.
This is a fictionalized story of my Grandmother's life. Each chapter is based on a family story of her adventures and challenges. From the northern most part of Norway her father dies in a fishing incident. Chapters cover the bear coming through the ceiling and killing her cow, she contact with the lapp wolf killer on a skiing trip to Russia to trade furs, and her voyage to America. In America we see problems and dangerous of isolation in a sod shanty, followed by wolfs on a skiing trip to find work in Watertown and the problems of getting a Swedish Batchelor to propose.
Excerpt
It was late in the day when the train arrived in Brookings, the first station in Dakota Territory. As she stepped down off the train, the fine dust made her sneeze and then sneeze again. Everything around her on the station platform was in disorder, and she was engulfed in noise, moving bodies, dust and the stench that heat draws out of animals and people. Her senses were overwhelmed.
People were moving around like two schools of fish swimming through each other. Baggage was being loaded and unloaded, carts being pushed to and frow on the platform. Standing with her baggage amid all the confusion, Christina felt dizzy and bewildered. She bowed her head and put her hands over her eyes to allow herself time to regain her presence of mind.
As she took her hands away from her face, some stray hair fell over her faqce blocking her view of the chaotic scene. She poked at the unruly strands; her inner thoughts fluttering from one dead eand to the other in the maze of her mind. "Oh, my back aches so. My legs are stiff. My hair is dirty: It's out of control. I'm sure I look even worse than usual." Out loud to no one in particular she asked, "What on earth do I do next?" The question was lost. Her voice was only a whisper in the wind of sound that surrounded her.
Professional Reviews
Christina's Saga
"Wayne Anderson--has penned a book about his grandmother Christina
Gunnerson. In 1880, at the tender age of 19, Gunnerson left her native Norway after a series of hardships, including the loss of her father and older brother. Breaking new grouond, both literally and figuratively, this woman journeyed by herself to what is now South Dakota to begin a new life as a homesteader. Anderson took liberty toweave together stories in a novelized form, but the heart of the book is based on the true-life strength of this remarkable woman. . .The country whre she settled is still empty and lonesome, and much of the frontier quality can opnly be imaged now. The book opens a gateway to the past and how people shaped a raw country to their reality. Lynn Israel, Columbia Daily Tribune, Sunday, December 26, 2010.
Ireland 1947. Seven weeks of relentless snow. Guard Eamon Foley is searching for a missing child.
At Toby Appleyard’s farm, he discovers the kitchen littered with dead cats. And the skeletal remains of a woman. Upstairs, Toby is dead in his bed.
A delightfully rare Historical Novel. 85% a biography of a spy, musician, mother and her neice trapped behind German lines in World War I. This background led to a diplomatic post in World War II. Aged 92, Vera disclosed her past life one year before
