Against My Dreams: An Immigrant's Story

These engaging narrative poems are written in the voice of the author’s grandmother, Gunnhild Olavsdatter Breland, daughter of a man who refuses to believe the earth is round. Born in 1894 in a tiny farm district in the mountains of southern Norway, she follows her older sister to America in 1913, settling in New York City, a remarkable contrast to the landscape of her childhood. Gunnhild knows no English and has about a year of schooling, gained when the schoolmaster made his annual rounds carrying the schoolbooks on his back. An exploration of an immigrant’s life that spans the Twentieth Century, this is a piece of the American story. It’s also the story of a particular woman, marginalized by gender, national origin, mental illness and social class, who weaves folktale and Old Country wisdom with her own unique practicality and hard-won truth.