I felt a connection to this book. My ancestors came from Sweden and settled in the Midwest. Swede Hollow gave me a great appreciation for what my family went through and makes me want to know more about my own family history.

Since the pilgrims came to the New World, people have come to this land for opportunities that were not available in their homelands. Such is the case for the Klars, a Swedish family hoping to achieve success as other Swedes had done before them. The book tells the bleak side of the family's arrival in New York and then their journey to Swede Hollow near St. Paul, Minnesota, where they struggle to make a life for themselves.
I had a difficult reading the book to the end as it moved too slow for me. It had good character development, though some of it somewhat stereotypical.

Swede Hollow gave a wonderful insight in to the life of poor, hopeful immigrants looking for a better life in late 19th century and early 20th America. It centres around the struggles of the millions of immigrants who landed on American shores fleeing poverty, persecution, conflict and suffering with hopes of building a life and a future for themselves and their families. Larsmo's descriptions were so horrifyingly accurate that I felt myself on so many occasions immersed in the the destitution in which they found themselves in New York when they landed and in the shanty town that was to become their home in the Minnesota. This book was well researched and I really enjoyed the sideline story lines that ran through the novel. This was a really good read, one that I'd highly recommend.

3.5 stars
Swede Hollow is the fictional account of a true location in Minnesota, which was inhabited by mostly Swedish immigrants. It tells the story of one family's journey from Sweden to the United States, and then it documents their lives in Swede Hollow and beyond. This book is full of detail and character development. There are many stories being told, but they all weave together very well. The entire book chronicles the hardships of the Klar family and others, but the last section was particularly sad and a little difficult to read.

I recommend those book to those with an interest in family sagas and historical fiction.

Thanks to University of Minnesota Press and NetGalley for the ARC.

2.5 stars.

I wanted to like this one more than I did and I pushed through to make it to the end. There are snippets of wonderful story in here, the writing is good, and the characters really do start to become their own, however there are some things that detracted from my enjoyment.

The majority of the book is told in 3rd person. This works very well and is a comfortable writing style with good description. Every once in a while, though, this turns to 1st person for a couple of characters. These chapters felt out of place, didn't seem to add a lot to the story that couldn't have been done in 3rd person, and the shift in tone pulled me out of the story.

The novel primarily focuses on the Klar family. This is great. The family is dynamic and has a lot to bring to the table. But...once again, there are occasional derailments. Intermittently interspersed are edited newspaper articles from the time period as well as short stories about a man named Ola, who seems to have been a bit of a fabled character in Swede Hollow during this time period. These pieces, while interesting, do not fit with the story of the Klars and again steered me away from the story and distracted my reading.

Overall, I enjoyed learning about this bit of history, especially since it is relatively local to me. But the narrative seemed to plod along a bit more than it should have and a bit more cohesiveness could have gone a long way. There are fabulous pieces here and the start of a good, slow burn, family drama, it just wasn't up my alley.

Swede Hollow tells the story of a Swedish immigrant family, Gustaf and Anna Klar, their three children, and successive generations. It begins in Liverpool where the family traveled from Göteborg before boarding a White Star Line ship to New York and by rail to Minnesota, When my uncle and grandparents immigrated, they also went from Göteborg to Liverpool and boarded a White Star Line ship though they went to Quebec City instead. My grandparents took the Canadian Pacific to Minnesota while the Klars took the Great Northern. Still, the similarities were striking at the beginning. My grandfather and Gustaf Klar were both shoemakers, too. From there they diverged, my grandparents choosing to homestead while the Klars were city folk, trying their luck in New York City before settling in Swede Hollow in St. Paul.

This is the story of their struggle and the struggles of their neighbors to carve out a life in the city. There story reflects the true history of the immigrant community. While the Klars and their neighbors are inventions, the happenings are based on historical events. This is emphasized by some story elements presented as news articles. Their lives are hardscrabble marked by ambition, hard work, labor strife, and poverty. I loved the book and hated it to end.

Swede Hollow is an excellent book and you don’t have to be the granddaughter of Swedish immigrants to enjoy it. The characters are well-developed and complex. Even when wrong-headed, the reader can understand why they do what they do. It is a timely reminder that xenophobia is a constant and that immigrants often are people with deep, abiding ambition.

There is a fairly large group of characters, fellow travelers on the White Star Line, neighbors, and employers. There are ethnic rivalries and biases. Hamm’s Beer, for example, would only employ Germans. The narrative shifts from one to another. One of the more interesting characters is Inga, a woman who immigrated on her own mind and influenced the others. These immigrants struggled to wrest a life for themselves and build a future. I am grateful for them and the people who inspired them. I am also grateful someone had taken on the task of telling their story.

I received an e-galley of Swede Hollow from the publisher via NetGalley.

Swede Hollow at University of Minnesota Press
Ola Larsmo author site (Swedish) & at Swedish Book Review (English)

A best-seller and it is easy to see why.

“Swede Hollow” is the story of a group of Swedish settlers who crossed the Atlantic as steerage passengers in appalling conditions in the hope of a better life in America. This epic story follows their lives, from the 1890s to the 1950s. It is worth noting that in the first two decades of the Twentieth Century fourteen and a half million immigrants arrived in the United States, most of them from Europe. Fleeing poverty, prejudice, religious and political oppression, they arrived in America with little but their determination and their hope.

The families’ first experience of the new world is grim. Processed like cattle in the Babel of cultures that was Ellis Island, a fire breaks out and they are taken by ferry to Manhattan. Dumped unceremoniously on the streets of New York, they struggle to survive. Here we see for the first time what will become a recurring theme in the book, the hostility and mutual suspicion of the rival ethnic groups. Germans will not hire Swedes, the Irish will not deal with Italians etc. Communities live in ghettos. The prejudice of the old world takes root in the new.

Packed into crowded tenements, in squalid conditions, Gustav’s family is rescued by the Salvation Army who gives them the money for the train journey to Swede Hollow, in St Paul’s, Minnesota.

The author threads history into fiction with a light hand. This is an engaging, evocative and often, very moving story. Early on, I cared about these people. Larsmo writes vividly of the harshness of winter and the strength and resilience required to forge a new life out of nothing.

The story of the families parallels that of the nation. Their grit and struggle, their joys and sorrows are all played out in this primitive settlement. Strangers in an alien land, Larsmo’s description of “the vast prairie landscape, green and desolate, without beginning, without end,” is not merely poetic, but meaningful. He communicates a real sense of the immensity and richness of this half-tamed land and of the immigrants’ uneasy position in it.

In some parts, the story sags - the pace of the narrative slowed down by historical accuracy, but it is a book that is well worth reading. Descriptions of the harsh working conditions, either in manual labour on the railroad or industrial drudgery in sweatshops and factories, are vivid and powerfully written. The new world is not easy. Families are forced to endure conditions often worse than those they left behind. Some make a brave new life for themselves and some are lost.

Larsmo writes with a clear, unsentimental eye of the binding ties of clan and tribe- not always governed by love or even liking, but by the inescapable power of shared blood and a shared history. In describing the particular in one time and one place, he shows us a broader view. The story of a nation and the people who forged it with their lives. This book is a best seller in America and it is easy to see why.

Charlotte Gower

Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review.

Swede Hollow by by Ola Larsmo

Mixed feelings on this one. I ended up reading the entire book because I wanted to find out what happened but can’t say that it was an uplifting or happy book in any way. I know immigrants had it rough and this book spelled that out well but there is usually some happiness somewhere along the way for at least some in a family saga.

This book spans the period from 1897 to 2007 and includes the voyage to America, landing in New York then living there awhile before moving to Swede Hollow. The Klars have it tough and really don’t get much of a break in life. One of their daughters does better herself and removes herself somewhat from the others. As with many families there are family tragedies and issues to contend with. I have to say that the 2007 bit lost me...I had not a clue who the person in that section actually was and wonder if it was just an add-on to make the story conclude on a more positive note. Another part that seemed odd was the inclusion of newspaper articles from various time periods that were put in just to explain what was happening in history but did not always refer to any of the characters in the story.

I felt this was a dark book with death, prison, murder, abandoned families, riots, lynchings...and the list goes on. The writing was clear but rather more of a narration than being in the story giving it an old fashioned feel.

If you enjoy historical family sagas then t his book is one you will probably enjoy.

Did I enjoy this book? Yes and No
Would I read another book by this author? Probably not

Thank you to NetGalley and University of Minnesota Press for the ARC – This is my honest review.

3-4 Stars

I received this from Netgalley.com for a review.

When Gustaf and Anna Klar and their three children leave Sweden for New York in 1897, they take with them a terrible secret and a longing for a new life. An unexpected gift allows the Klars to make one more desperate move, this time to the Midwest and a place called Swede Hollow.

A slow moving tale.

2.75☆

This was a fantastic story about the Klar family that moves from Sweden to a community in Minnesota called Swede Hollow. I found the characters and story themselves to be engaging. I couldn't stop reading and when I had to, I couldn't wait to pick up the story again and learn more about the lives of the Klar family and their community. The story is filled with the family's experiences as immigrants in Minnesota in the late 19th and into the 20th century and follows them through hardship, loss, and ultimately, the shared struggle of learning to live in a harsh landscape surrounded by only a small minority of people who understand their language and way of life. I had never heard of Swede Hollow before picking up this book and I think Larsmo did an incredible job at bringing this community to life and helping us to imagine what life was like during this time period.

This was definitely a family saga and an interesting read, but it could have been so much better. Each chapter is told by different perspectives, we start with Anna, then Ellen and Elizabet, Inga and multiple other characters along the way. We follow the lives of a family immigrating from Sweden due to unfortunate events, they first land in New York, then continue on to the Midwest. This is a book to be savored, not read to fast, but just sit back and flow with the tide.
My biggest con of this story is the chapters, they would show up in the middle of a page and there would be no chapter heading to tell you who was going to give their story or what year you were in, it felt disjointed several times, hopping between characters you had not heard of before. This made the book hard to follow even though the Klar family story was well worth it. This is a fictional story but it is based upon true events and a real location of Swede Hollow in the early 1900’s.
I was pleased to have been given the opportunity to receive this book from University of Minnesota Press through NetGalley. The opinions expressed in this review are completely my own. This one gets 4 stars.

I expected to enjoy this book much more than I actually did. I’m fascinated by stories of the early settlers in America, the brave families who emigrated from Europe and made new lives for themselves. However, this book just didn’t work for me, as I found it lacklustre with stereotypical characters and hackneyed scenarios. It pales in comparison with such pioneer classics as the work of Vilhelm Moberg, for example, and as the book progressed it just felt like such familiar territory. The tone is flat throughout, and I found it interesting that the author is a journalist as it has that documentary feel about it rather than being a fully developed narrative about fully developed characters. It tells the story of the Klar family who leave their homeland in 1897 for a new life in the mid-west, in a small town called Swede Hollow near St Paul, Minnesota. There we follow the family and their neighbours over the years right up to the present. We see the decades pass through the eyes of different protagonists, although their voices all tend to sound the same and are not clearly differentiated. Swede Hollow is a real place and the events described here are based on meticulously researched fact, and it’s an interesting and authentic account of the immigrant experience. Overall, however, I was disappointed and the novel failed to engage me.

This is a very sad, though true, look at a group of Swedes who decide to emigrate to America. They think New York might be the place for them, but they soon find that the costs of everything are high, while wages are low. Gustaf, Anna, Elisabet, Ellen, Carl, Mrs. Lundgren traveling with her son, David, Inga. They left secrets in Sweden, but they brought one sort of baggage or another with them. Eventually, they settle in Minnesota, near St. Paul, in an area that comes to be known as Swede Hollow. "A Foreign Settlement. Squatters' Homes. A Little Hamlet of Shanties and Huts. Questionable legal status of the Holdings and the Extent of the Flaxen-Haired Population. Nestled in a little valley."

Conditions not much better than New York, if any, but at least they are all Swedes. Speak the same language. Remember the same places back home. "Things are hard here but it's still better than in New York. And no doubt it's better that all of you came here instead of staying back in Sweden. I suppose it's small comfort that other people have it worse. But this is where we live and not somewhere else. Keep that in mind."

Many of the men work at the Hamm Brewery, just up on the bluff, but the required language there is German. The hours are long, the work difficult, the pay miniscule. There are risks and there are accidents.

There are births and deaths and sickness; there are fights and jail sentences, there is hunger and there is bone chilling cold.

This could easily be a book about Irish or Italians or Poles, or any of our ancestors who bore heavy burdens and experienced frightening conditions to be free in America.

I read this EARC courtesy of Net Galley and the University of Minnesota Press; pub date 10/01/19

Swede Hollow is a real place in St Paul, Minnesota. For decades in the late 19th to mid-twentieth century, it was also a poor neighborhood housing waves of immigrants--first Swedes, then Irish, Italian, Polish, and Mexican. Now the area is a park.

For this novel Larsmo meticulously researched life in the Hollow and for Minnesota's Swedish immigrants in particular. The details--the creek as open sewer, railroad tunnels, churches, Hamm mansion, workplaces, railroad, union activities, and so on--are all accurate. Only the main characters are fictional--a few of the minor characters were real people. Also included are a few newspaper articles that are from the St Paul paper.

For his story, Larsmo focuses on a family of 5. We see their journey, their struggle in New York, and then their settling into the Hollow with people who had been on the same ship. We see the children grow, the neighbors, the jobs, and how life moves on. Nothing shocking here, it's all very believable and very based in fact. I have read a lot of immigration novels over the last 30 years, and this one stands out in its historically accurate setting--and given that it is from the University of Minnesota Press, this is not all that surprising. I see this book being assigned in history classes and selling well throughout Minnesota and the greater midwest. It would also make a good middle grade/high school read, with a shotgun wedding but no graphic anything, no cursing, some drunks but definitely no glorification.

In a change from most immigration fiction, this was actually written in Swedish, with a 2016 publication date--100 years after the novel takes place. Larsmo is an award-winning Swedish journalist/academic who spent some time in Minnesota and that was when much of his research was done. It was written in Swedish and translated by Tiina Nunnally, who also did the fabulous recent translation of Kristin Lavransdatter.

Swede Hollow was a "shantytown immigrant community" from the 1850's to the 1950's. A newspaper article in the St. Paul Daily Globe described it as "...a squatter settlement...[a] pleasing disorder [of] weather-beaten shanties...rooftop next to rooftop...with the dilapidated houses wedged into whatever space could be found...every once in a while there's an empty house..." Inga's cottage had a view of the lower part of the Hollow. Furnishings consisted of a sofa bed, potbellied stove, plain wooden table and chairs. No plumbing or electricity. Why did Inga dwell in this valley slum, home to arguably one thousand Swedish immigrants?

For Inga, a single woman, the Klar family of five and Widow Lundgren with son David, it started with an emigrant contract. They would be conveyed from Sweden to New York on "the Majestic" in the ship's stuffy, sweltering steerage compartment. Widow Lundgren had received a letter from her son Jonathan describing his job at the railroad and then decided to join him in St. Paul, Minnesota. Inga followed suit. Anna Klar "...was frightened by this vast, new world that offered no discernible sense of direction...everyone else heading toward something new while she was heading away from something old and familiar that had shattered." Anna's husband, Gustaf Klar, a shoemaker by profession, insisted upon trying to find employment in New York. While a large group of Swedes continued on to St. Paul, Gustaf "beat the pavement" in search of a job. During a heavy snowstorm, he tried to apply for a job at Mueller and Sons Boot Company. "I do work. Like this. In Sweden." In broken English, the guard at the gate said, "Here all speak German." Through the kindness of a Salvation Army worker, a collection provided the money for the Klar family to move to an abandoned one-room house in Swede Hollow.

Gustaf and others left for work in the dark. Often "the snow creaked beneath their wooden soles." Perhaps workers would be needed to clear snow off the railroad tracks or knock ice off the switches. Top pay for any job, one dollar a day, that is, if day work could be found. In competition for employment were Italian and Irish workers who lived on both sides of the viaduct and railroad tunnels. "A muted murmur of voices, words spoken in so many different languages..." Most immigrants lived within insular communities. The Hamm Brewery like many businesses was not an equal opportunity employer. Despite the cards stacked against her, Ellen Klar secretly learned to use a typewriter and found employment in a bilingual law firm writing correspondence in both Swedish and English. Many were not as lucky.

Life in and around Swede Hollow was described to the reader through the narration of different area residents. Inga was seemingly upbeat and forward looking. David Lundgren was unable to move on and paid a hefty price. "Swede Hollow" by Ola Larsmo is a work of historical fiction, a glimpse at Swedish immigration in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. It is an excellent, at times unsettling read I highly recommend.

Thank you University of Minnesota Press and Net Galley for the opportunity to read and review "Swede Hollow".

This Swedish book is getting an English translation.

DNF- I read about 30% of Swede Hollow before I said enough. The third person narration and interspersed newspaper articles creates a very disjointed and unemotional story. I never connected with any of the character, nor did I feel especially sympathetic for their plight, despite the fact that my ancestors were Swedish and probably had similarities difficulties. Considering this is getting an English translation, I really expected better quality writing.

This was a great book. I loved it because you do not hear very much about the experience of Swedish immigrants, and I myself have never heard of Swede Hollow. I loved the reasons for making the crossing that came about as the novel progressed and the very poignant look at life for immigrants without delving into too much of the political side of things. The characters are all great to read about and I enjoyed each story as it came- everyone seemed real.

I will say that I did not like the iseemingly random inserts of news articles and the jumping of storytelling from first to 3rd person.

All in all it was great!

A family saga a story of Swedish immigrants coming with hope coming to start a new life.The hardships the struggles tragedies bring each character alive ..A truly involving emotional read a look back in time to brave souls who helped build America..