I just made it through Book 2 of Vilhelm Moberg's Emigrant series. Though it was not intentional, it took me almost an entire year to make my way through 372 pages that tell the story of the emigrants' first year in America. It was almost like reading in real time.While reading that slowly might ruin most books, it actually worked out pretty well in this case. Moberg's approach in these novels is something akin to recreating a journal--lots of short entries based on a specific event or conversation of a given day. Occasionally, he even includes fictionalized excerpts of letters received or written by one of his characters, a quote from something they've read, or the text of some official document.
The real strength of the books is the character development. The events and circumstances are interesting, but what is most compelling are the feelings, beliefs, perspectives, fears, hopes, and sorrows of the people experiencing those events and circumstances. The kind of things you might read in their journals if they written them.
I'm not sure everyone would enjoy these books as I do. But for me, a Scandinavian (Norwegian-Swedish) Minnesotan living near the area where the emigrants settle (Stillwater, Taylor Falls), Moberg's books feel like some treasure I might have found in an ancient trunk in grandfather's attic.
I just started book three, The Settlers, and hope to make it through books three and four in 2009.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ • 4/5
Unto a Good Land
The Emigrants Novels, Book 2
by Vilhelm Moberg
Published between 1951 and 1961, Moberg's four-volume epic offers the saga of the Swedish immigrant's role in the settling of the American frontier. Book Two opens in the summer of 1850 as the emigrants begin their trek from New York City to a new home in the Minnesota Territory. The journey takes them by riverboat, steam wagon, Great Lakes steamship, and oxcart to Chisago County.
