Nikolai's fortune

Plot

As a child, Solveig Torvik heard stories of a lost, mysterious great-grandfather who left Finland for America to make his fortune - leaving Torvik's great-grandmother and his unborn daughter behind. As a reporter, Torvik determined to discover the fate of the man who followed his dreams to Oregon. She uncovered not only the story of one man, but also the saga of an entire family. InNikolai's Fortune, a tale of Scandinavian women, the journalist turns fact into fiction and shares the tales of her ancestors as she imagines they would have told them. Nikolai's Fortuneis a heartbreaking, multigenerational epic, chronicling family secrets and sufferings against the backdrop of Scandinavian history and culture. Blending memoir and historical fiction, grandmother, mother, and daughter each share their own story: Kaisa, of her mother's love for Nikolai and her own 500-mile trek at the age of twelve from impoverished Finland across the snowy mountains of Lapland; Berit, of child slavery and an obsession with seeking out her grandfather's fortune for her mother; and Hannah, the voice of Torvik, of her childhood during the Nazi occupation of Norway and her family's emigration to Idaho. Through detailed historical research into census, church, and weather records, as well as academic and museum sources, Torvik recaptures a dramatic story nearly lost to memory and inherits something worth more than a fortune in riches - a sense of her family history, ethnic background, and the generations of remarkable women who came before her. Norwegian-bornSolveig Torvikwas a reporter, editor, and columnist at theSeattle Post-Intelligencerfor thirty years. She was also a reporter forUnited Press Internationalin Salt Lake City and for theSan Francisco Chronicle, and an editor at theSan Jose Mercury News. "An intriguing cross between a heartbreaking memoir and expertly researched historical fiction,Nikolai's Fortuneimmerses the reader in a beautifully drawn world of poverty and female struggle - from the hardscrabble farms of 19th-century Finland, to Norway under the German occupation, to family revelations after imigration to Idaho. It is the most classic of American stories: the long winding journey from Old World to New, and then the rediscovery of tangled roots, of mothers and daughters, in homelands never entirely left behind." - Bill Dietrich, author ofThe Scourge of God "Torvik tells a story that is at times moving, at times disturbing, and nearly always riveting." -- Katherine Hanson, editor ofAn Everyday Story: Norwegian Women's Fiction "Solveig Torvik has provided readers with a rich, detailed and beautifully woven tale of a northern European family. Her writing is flawless." -- Christine Ingebritsen, author ofThe Nordic States and European Unity