What We Leave Behind

By: Barb Solberg

Narrated by: Barb Solberg

Martin and Asta came to America in 1913 to homestead and create a better life for themselves and a hoped-for family. Nineteen years later during the difficult years of the Great Plains Dust Bowl, they intend to improve the lives of three of their nine children by sending their 18-year-old daughter with her two younger sisters to Norway to live with relatives for two years.

But things do not go according to plan. The oldest sister falls in love with and marries a young Norwegian man, leaving the two younger sisters with no one to take them home. By 1940, when Germany invades Norway, the two younger sisters were living with the family relative, who in the meantime married a Quisling, a member of the Norwegian Nazi Party.

The two sisters miss the last US evacuee ship out of Petsamo, Finland, and soon German soldiers take one sister to Grini, a concentration camp north of Oslo. Eventually, she and her older sister both marry men active in the Norwegian Resistance Movement of WWII.

Will the entire family ever reconnect?

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2022 Barb Solberg (P)2022 Barb Solberg

Well done.

Well done. Superb character development. Brings life to those early immigrant farmers who came to America.

A Must Read or Hear: A Most Thorough Historical Fiction

A Must Read or Hear: A Most Thorough Historical Fiction

I listened to the audiobook and read the accompanying pdf with family pictures. For the obsessed genealogist, this book succinctly brings to life the documents and research one must do to "find family" left behind in lost memories. The narrative imagines and recounts stories to fill in the gaps, and research of different events in history weave through like a well-knit sweater. For anyone interested in the great European migration of the late 1800s and early 1900s, this book will capture your imagination and inspire you to dig deeper. For the audiobook listener, you will hear Barb's absolutely charming North Dakota accent. It made me a little homesick for my own North Dakota family I had to leave behind to make my way in the world. A thousand thanks to Barb Solberg for this wonderful creation! And thanks to my childhood swim coach Patrice Mitchell for recommending this amazing book.

Local history

I enjoyed hearing this rendition of Norwegian immigration to my native state, North Dakota. The return to Norway, and WWll involment was not expected.