LAND OF DREAMS

In the third in Nixon's Ellis Island series, Kristin Swenson and her parents settle on a Minnesota farm, in a house Mamma fears is haunted by former occupants. Meanwhile (to her parents' distress), the independent-minded 17-year-old absorbs the feminist views of a neighbor's college-educated sister, tangles with the local minister over her modern notions, and strikes up a friendship with another neighbor's son, Johan—who admires her high spirits and free thinking. The cardboard characters here make a flimsy support for an overabundance of historical issues plus some carefully researched details of a Swedish-American community in 1902, while Nixon—though ever a fluent narrator- -stretches credibility with the relationship between Kristin and Johan, who seem more like transplants from the present than young people of their own time. Still, a readable novel that makes an accessible introduction to its period setting. (Fiction. 10-14)