A riveting family saga immersed in the gritty, dark side of Swedish immigrant life in America in the early twentieth century When Gustaf and Anna Klar and their three children leave Sweden for New York in 1897, they take with them a terrible secret and a longing for a new life. But their dream of starting over is nearly crushed at the outset: a fire devastates Ellis Island just as they arrive, and then the relentlessly harsh conditions and lack of work in the city make it impossible for Gustaf to support his family. An unexpected gift allows the Klars to make one more desperate move, this time to the Midwest and a place called Swede Hollow. Their new home is a cluster of rough-hewn shacks in a deep, wooded ravine on the edge of St. Paul, Minnesota. The Irish, Italian, and Swedish immigrants who live here are a hardscrabble lot usually absent from the familiar stories of Swedish American history. The men hire on as poorly paid day laborers for the Great Northern or Northern Pacific railroads or work at the nearby brewery, and the women clean houses, work at laundries, or sew clothing in stifling factories. Outsiders malign Swede Hollow as unsanitary and rife with disease, but the Klar family and their neighbors persevere in this neglected corner of the city—and consider it home. Extensively researched and beautifully written, Ola Larsmo’s award-winning novel vividly portrays a family and a community determined to survive. There are hardships, indignities, accidents, and harrowing encounters, but also acts of loyalty and kindness and moments of joy. This haunting story of a real place echoes the larger challenges of immigration in the twentieth century and today.
Swede Hollow: roman
A cluster of shacks in a wooded ravine on the edge of St. Paul, Minnesota, Swede Hollow is home to immigrants who have largely been absent from the familiar stories of Swedish American history--a hard-luck lot brought vividly to life in Ola ...
This novel "follows a group of Swedish immigrants at the turn of the 20th century and their experiences trying to forge a life for their families in Swede Hollow, a collection of shacks in a wooded ravine on the edge of the emerging ...
A pictorial history of the 30-acre ravine named Swede Hollow in what is now St. Paul, Minnesota.
Congregation B'nai Emunah was founded two years later—then viciously bombed by so-called Halloween pranksters in 1956. ... In March 1949, the O.W. Lindberg Company agreed to build Lee Brandt and his wife a beautiful redbrick mansion ...
In Urban Lowlands, Steven T. Moga looks closely at the Harlem Flats in New York City, Black Bottom in Nashville, Swede Hollow in Saint Paul, and the Flats in Los Angeles, to interrogate the connections between a city’s actual landscape ...
This is the first book to focus on this historic murder and the first thorough biography of Phelan, a notorious pioneer intimately involved in the making of St. Paul and founding of Minnesota. Was he guilty?
Stories from St. Paul Neighborhoods and Beyond
When Ichabod Crane, a soldier from the Colonial Army, is resurrected from his grave more than two centuries after he was killed in battle, he partners with Lieutenant Abbie Mills of the Sleepy Hollow Police Department to fight the evil ...
1993 American Institute of Architects International Architecture Book Award