Cold Coffee: V.1 of Trilogy, Saga

It's the early 1900s in still-Victorian Bergen, Norway. Little Swanhilde Holmboe has never felt especially loved by her fat, selfish mother Sophie, who also makes her sweet but inept husband, Martin Holmboe, unhappy, by her constant cravings for more money. When the father makes a disastrous investment, hoping to please Sophie, she divorces him to marry her successful distant cousin, Henry Krogh. Young Swanhilde makes the best of it, yearning for the day she's grown and can get

At fourteen,...