Land of Dreams

by Joan Lowery Nixon

Overview

Swedish immigrant Kristin Swensen lives on a farm in Minnesota. She hoped for a new life in America, but she realizes that her parents are clinging as closely as possible to the life they knew in Sweden. Kristin can’t accept coming all this way only to re-create what she left behind. She longs to speak English and help the cause of women’s rights. Her parents, however, want her to settle down and get married. Must Kristin give up her dream of independence and accept her parents’ Old World values?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780307827517
Publisher:	Random House Children's Books
Publication date:	11/27/2013
Series:	Ellis Island Series
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	160
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	12 Years

About the Author

Joan Lowery Nixon was the author of more than 130 books for young readers and was the only four-time winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Best Young Adult Mystery Award. She received the award for The Kidnapping of Christina Lattimore, The Séance, The Name of the Game Was Murder, and The Other Side of the Dark, which also won the California Young Reader Medal. Her historical fiction included the award-winning series The Orphan Train Adventures, Orphan Train Children, and Colonial Williamsburg: Young Americans.

Editorial Reviews

Kristin is eager to begin her life in America. She's heard that it is the land of freedom, and she's ready to make her own decisions. But the rural community that her family joins in Minnesota is very like the Sweden they've left behind: people talk in Swedish; girls are still expected to learn to stitch and bake light cakes; and parents continue to arrange marriages. Like her friends Rebekah ("Land of Hope", 1992) and Rosie ("Land of Promise" ), whom Kristin met aboard the ship to America, Kristin dreams of an exciting future. She'd like to leave the farm and move to Minneapolis, where women gather to earn the right to vote. When fire strikes her home, however, Kristin learns the importance of community support and accepts that change will come slowly. In the third book in her Ellis Island series, Nixon once again offers a compelling, believable story that gives readers a peek at the past. Young teens will sympathize with feisty Kristin's impatience and her struggle to assert herself.

Candace Smith