Other editions of book A Long Way Home: From Sweden to Cedarhome, a trail of tears and triumph

Amid personal turmoil and wretched economic conditions in Sweden, Johan and Anna left for America in 1867. As peasant farmers with five children, they were willing to give up the familiar at home for the unseen abroad, to abandon the poverty they had inherited for a prosperity they hoped to find on their own. They sought a future, not a fortune, and the search took them on a 33-year odyssey across rural America, from Minnesota to west-central Iowa and northeast Nebraska, and finally to the shores of Puget Sound. Along the way, they faced disease, death and disappointments in a 19th century rural America unfamiliar to today's generation. Their odyssey offers timeless lessons in the value of family cohesion and the meaning of home.