In This Series A Long Journey to a New Home Will Spring Come?

Homesteaders

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A Long Journey to a New Home

Novel

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Driven by grinding poverty in the 1860s, the Ytterhorn family of sharecroppers in northern Norway sells the furniture to pay for a passage and the promise of a better life in North Dakota. With their scant belongings and determination against all odds, they typify the migrants' experience in a moving and vivid story. And it is a very long journey, beset by tragedy and hardship. During the sea voyage, young Ma Ytterhorn dies from childbirth fever and her husband doubts his decision to submit his family to such a perilous undertaking. He, the new baby and his other children, call upon his wife's best friend to come out and join them. They then together face the winter trek overland by wagon. Along the way they encounter plenty of helping hands and, eventually, land to cultivate, a new homestead and a new beginning.

Will Spring Come?

Novel

The second volume of the Homesteaders Series traces the Ytterhorn family through its first year on the new land.  Arriving in May, they claim land, build a cabin, break sod, raise a garden, and grow wheat for bread.  They seem to be winning the race to provide sufficiently to survive the harsh winter.

In September the Olson family arrives from Norway to claim the adjoining plot of land.  They Ytterhorns immediately aid their new neighbors in their struggle to prepare for winter.  A third family claims two plots of land, but they have arrived so late that their preparations are make-shift.  

Despite the uncertainties and harsh conditions, the three families develop a community, began a school and church, and seem to be thriving when disease and tragedy strike.  By spring, all has changed.