This book introduces Karl Oskar and Kristina Nilsson, their three young children, and eleven others who make up a resolute party of Swedes fleeing the poverty, religious persecution, and social oppression of Smaland. The Nilssons leave a farm too small and stony to support them. Kristina's uncle Danjel Andreasson seeks religious freedom for himself, his wife, and four children. For ten long weeks they suffer the cramped, filthy quarters of the sailing...

Portrays the family of Karl Oskar and Kristina Nilsson, prospering in the midst of Minnesota's growing Swedish community of the 1860s-90s. Years of toil have brought them a comfortable house and a thriving fram. Now they face a new and terrible challenge as Minnesota struggles through two bloody conflicts--the Civil War and the Dakota War.

The settlers focuses on Karl Oskar and Kristina Nilsson as they struggle to prosper on their new farm in Chisago County, Minnesota Territory, during the 1850s. Kristina, coping with a feeling of loss for Sweden and difficulty of adapting to a new land, draws strength from a newfound spirituality. Karl Oskar brings more land under cultivation and harvests rye, wheat, and corn. Together they survive blizzards, grasshopper plagues, wildcat speculation...

"First published in 1941, ...[this] is a charming history of a small, isolated community that once lay on the west bank of the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, tucked underneath the Washington Avenue bridge. From the 1880s to the 1940s the village was home to generations of Swedish, Norwegian, Czech, Irish, Polish, and especially Slovak immigrants. This book's vivid descriptions of their traditions and adaptations offer an unusual insight into Minnesota's...