Posted in 52 Books in 52 Weeks 2009

This is the last book in the Emigrants series that I mentioned before.  I really enjoyed this series!  Beautiful writing, thought-provoking themes, fascinating characters, historical detail - what more could one want?

This last book covers the period from 1860 - 1890, focusing historically on how the Civil War affected immigrants and on the Indian uprising that happened in Minnesota in 1862.  Moberg does a very good job of explaining both sides of the Indian uprising, and in the end, it seems to me that the fault was with the government, not the settlers, but of course, it got taken out on the settlers.  While looking online, I saw that this is considered to have had the greatest civilian casualties in the U.S. until 9/11/2001!

One of the themes that Moberg touches on over and over is that the emigrants chose not just for themselves but for future generations.  Karl Oskar and Kristina emigrated to be able to feed and care for their children and they succeeded, but in doing so, they decided that their children would be Americans, not Swedes.  This is really brought home in the final pages when we find out that most of the spouses of their children are not Swedish.  And the "last letter home," the one telling Karl Oskar's sister of his death, is written by a neighbor because none of his children can write in Swedish. Then there are no ties anymore to Sweden.  No more letters will be exchanged, and Karl Oskar's sister will never know what happened to her nieces and nephews.