Description
Book SynopsisA poignant, multigenerational tale of the Swedish-American experience for two disparate Chicago families
Trade Review"Richard Lindberg does not spare himself or his ancestors in this poignant and powerful memoir of his family’s entry to the United States. I was reminded of the great cycle of emigrant novels by Vilhelm Moberg, the noted Swedish novelist I first read and so admired in my youth, who wrote vividly and sometimes brutally of the downtrodden classes of his forebears. Lindberg evokes the same haunted landscape of poverty and superstition from which his ancestors fled to America . . . only to suffer different demons in that new land. In the end his story is a redemptive one of endurance and survival."—Harry Mark Petrakis
"Deep, introspective and somber, this is by far Lindberg’s most personal book to date." —Kirkus Reviews
Table of ContentsContents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Sweden and the Sorrows
2. Two Men from Swedetown
3. The Opposite Sides of the Tracks
4. The Shadows of Despair
5. Feeding the Sparrows
6. Oscar and Evelyn and Charley
7. A Picnic, a Proposal, a Passage
8. Charity Begins at Home
9. The Crying Game
10. The House That Was Not a Home
11. The Shook-up Generation
12. Custody Visits
13. Slam Books and Second Chances
14. A Child of Clubland
15. The Taming of the Swede
16. Love Is for Barflies
17. A Worker of the World
18. Ashes to Ashes—and Back to Ronneby
19. A Wayne King Lullaby
Epilogue
Postscript
