Though Uppsala, Iowa, takes its name from a city in her native Sweden, life there is different for young Inga Linberg. With her parents' blessing, she has taken employment in the home of Mr. Bridger, a dairy farmer, caring for his ill mother and two young orphaned nieces. He is an unhappy man, but loyal, hardworking and honorable - also quite handsome, judging by Inga's beautiful, flirtatious younger sisters. Now Inga, too, longs to be seen as beautiful...

After immigrating from Sweden to join relatives in an American prairie community, Kirsten endures the ordeal of a strange school through a secret friendship with an Indian girl.

Meet Doris, a 96-year-old woman living alone in her Stockholm apartment. She has few visitors, but her weekly Skype calls with Jenny—her American grandniece, and her only relative—give her great joy and remind her of her own youth. When Doris was a girl, she was given an address book by her father, and ever since she has carefully documented everyone she met and loved throughout the years. Looking through the little book now, Doris sees the many...

From the Publisher: Book Four portrays the Nilsson family during the turmoil of living through the era of the Civil War and Dakota Conflict and their prospering in the midst of Minnesota's growing Swedish community of the 1860s-90s.