Orm Øverland – författare

"An authentic story of life in Minneapolis in the late nineteenth century. That ring of authenticity comes clearly from the mind and craft of an artist at work. For the contemporary reader, the novel provides a glimpse of an immigrant society, a culture in exile, and the immigrants' responses to the social scene ...Drawing on the realistic and naturalistic trends in Europe and in America, Janson has written an American novel that anticipates the works of such writers as Theodore Dreiser, Stephen Crane, and Sarah Orne Jewett."-from the Preface by Gerald Thorson First published in Norwegian by a Minneapolis firm in 1887, Drude Krog Janson's A Saloonkeeper's Daughter has been sadly neglected in the history of American literature, despite its unusually forward-looking portrayal of a self-reliant, career-minded woman and its importance within America's regional and urban literary traditions. Janson's lyrical coming-of-age novel tells the story of the pensive, beautiful Astrid Holm, forced by her family's bankruptcy to abandon a comfortable, middle-class life in Norway for a harsh, new existence in Minneapolis living in an apartment above her father's saloon.She attempts to escape this hardship through art (as an actress) and love (entering into an unhappy relationship with a brutish lawyer) until she finds her true calling as a Unitarian minister and fulfills her longing for meaningful companionship with Helene Nielsen, a selfless doctor to poor immigrants. With this edition of A Saloonkeeper's Daughter, an important and prescient work of American fiction is finally available in English.

The third volume of From American to Norway is the final book of collected letters written by Norwegian American immigrants from the years 1893 to 1914. During this time many Norwegians had left their homeland, traveled to America, and settled in the Midwest. The intended audience for letters home gradually transitioned from the expectation that letters were to be shared and published in local Norwegian communities to their recognition as a private form of communication. The challenges and opportunities that immigrants faced are described in these letters. The funny, sad, poignant, and inspirational experiences of the settlers are related from an intensely personal point of view.