I received a complimentary copy of this book from and was under no obligation to post a review. No compensation was received for sharing this review and all opinions are my own.
Published by Baker Books on October 1, 2013
Genres: Christian, Fiction, General, Historical, Religious
Pages: 350
The Long-Awaited Prequel to the RED RIVER OF THE NORTH Series
Twenty-year-old Ingeborg Strand is certain she is destined to be an old maid. She's had several suitors but none she deemed worthy of spending her life with. That is, until she meets a university student from Oslo, and feelings stronger than friendship begin to develop between them. But tragedy strikes, and the future begins to look bleaker than ever.
Grief settles heavily over Ingeborg, and her mother suggests that she leave Norway and start afresh in America, as so many others have done before her. But how will she accomplish that with little money and no one to accompany her?
It isn't long before she meets Roald Bjorklund, a widower who has been planning to go to America for some time, lured by the promise of free land. He's a good man, a hard-working man--and he has a young son who desperately needs a mother. He's clearly interested in Ingeborg, but is he the answer to her prayers? And what about love? This isn't how she's always imagined it.
Ingeborg Strand has a heartrending decision to make...
I’ve really liked other works by this author and I wanted to like this book because the cover is absolutely stunning.
Unfortunately, my expectations really fell short. I’ve actually put off writing this review because I was hoping that maybe I would come to view it differently.
I’m kind of disappointed in how this one worked out. I just wasn’t expecting to dislike this book so much and I don’t think I’ll read the rest of the series.
The everyday chores and tasks took up so much of the book that I was bored and exhausted just reading it.
I found myself skimming entire chapters simply because I didn’t care who washed the dishes or cooked the food or sheared the sheep at that point.
Then her terrible luck with romance? Sheesh! She went from having no man to being madly in love to having no man to having another man! Oi! I just wasn’t impressed.
About the Story
Ingeborg is on her family’s seter with her relatives doing a god-awful amount of chores—I’ve yet to figure out why all the children are up there doing all of this alone as it wasn’t explained.
Anyway, she happens to meet a handsome and injured traveler during her time there and falls hopelessly in love with him although with all the chores she was doing I really have no idea how there was time! It seems they went from no romance to talking about marriage.
Then, after a billion more chores her family returns home and she gets word that her injured traveler has even more misfortune and dies. At this point, there was already such a lack of romance that I was groaning but nevertheless, the story continues!
Ingborg at that point agrees to marry a widower so that she can be a mother to his son and that’s pretty much the end of the story!
I wish I sounded more optimistic and had more to say but with the lack of a true romance and the fact this book could have been used as a handbook on how to do farm chores, combined with all the phrases and words that I couldn’t even read (and the lack of a glossary of terms) this book just wasn’t a hit for me.
I will read other works by this author but I just don’t think I’ll even worry about the rest of this particular series!
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About Lauraine Snelling
Award-winning and best-selling author Lauraine Snelling began living her dream to be a writer with her first published book for young adult readers, Tragedy on the Toutle, in 1982. She has since continued writing more horse books for young girls, adding historical and contemporary fiction and nonfiction for adults and young readers to her repertoire. All told, she has seventy books published.
Shown in her contemporary romances and women’s fiction, a hallmark of Lauraine’s style is writing about real issues of forgiveness, loss, domestic violence, and cancer within a compelling story. Her work has been translated into Norwegian, Danish, and German, and she has won the Silver Angel Award for An Untamed Land and a Romance Writers of America Golden Heart for Song of Laughter.
As a sought after speaker, Lauraine encourages others to find their gifts and live their lives with humor and joy. Her readers clamor for more books more often, and Lauraine would like to comply … if only her paintbrushes and easel didn’t call quite so loudly.
Lauraine and her husband, Wayne, have two grown sons, and live in the Tehachapi Mountains with a watchdog Basset named Winston. They love to travel, most especially in their forty-foot motor coach, which they affectionately deem “a work in progress”.
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