SHADOWS INTO MIST

This is a yeasty, earthy, elemental story of Lovisa Lund and the hopes she brought with her from Sweden when she began her new life in Shady Grove, Minnesota. She found love in the new world, with Nils Enberg, whom she married -- but friendship was a rare thing in her new life. Nils hated Barnes, the local autocrat, and he put himself in debt to Barnes reluctantly. Still Lovisa pitied Melissy, Barnes' daughter, unwed, and soon to bear a child, and stood by Melissy in childbirth. Nils had cause to be glad she had cemented a bond between the two families later, when his note fell due and he was helpless from an accident. A frontier-family story ends hopefully with Lovisa, Nils and their baby son certain of their own unity.