The Last Letter Home: The Emigrant Novels: Book IV

by Vilhelm Moberg

Overview

Considered one of Sweden's greatest 20th-century writers, Vilhelm Moberg created Karl Oskar and Kristina Nilsson to portray the joys and tragedies of daily life for early Swedish pioneers in America. His consistently faithful depiction of these humble people's lives is a major strength of the Emigrant Novels.

Moberg's extensive research in the papers of Swedish emigrants in archival collections, including the Minnesota Historical Society, enabled him to incorporate many details of pioneer life. First published between 1949 and 1959 in Swedish, these four books were considered a single work by Moberg, who intended that they be read as documentary novels. These editions contain introductions written by Roger McKnight, Gustavus Adolphus College, and restore Moberg's bibliography not included in earlier English editions.

Book 4 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.

"It's important to have Moberg's Emigrant Novels available for another generation of readers."—Bruce Karstadt, American Swedish Institute

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780873517164
Publisher:	Minnesota Historical Society Press
Publication date:	06/30/2009
Series:	Emigrant Novels , #4
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	230
Sales rank:	1,053,754
File size:	784 KB

About the Author

Vilhelm Moberg was born in Småland, Sweden. His most famous work is a series of four novels--The Emigrants, Unto a Good Land, The Settlers, and Last Letter Home, all published in Sweden between 1949 and 1959, chronicling one Swedish family's migration to Minnesota in the mid- to late nineteenth century--a story that mirrored some of the author's own relatives' lives.

Editorial Reviews

Published between 1951 and 1961, Moberg's four-volume "Emigrant" epic offers the saga of the Swedish immigrant's role in the settling of the American frontier.

Library Journal

Moberg produces a canvas as crowded as a Breughel painting.”
New York Times Book Review

“A frequently moving account of the struggle of a young Swedish immigrant couple to make a place for themselves and their children.”
New Yorker

“Well written and skillfully done.”
New York Herald Tribune Book Review

“The book is as complete and full as the life it portrays. . . . Moberg reiterates that the noblest mystery of the world is man.”
Chicago Tribune

“Poignantly moves the reader to appreciate the saga of the immigrants.”
Library Journal

"It's important to have Moberg's Emigrant Novels available for another generation of readers."
Bruce Karstadt, American Swedish Institute

From the Publisher