Embedded Files
by Birgitta Hjalmarson
by Birgitta Hjalmarson
The First World War rages on the continent. Hidden in the forest of Sweden, a country church gleams in the sun. Anna, a young woman, sits in the front pew. The vicar pauses to wipe his brow.
After the sermon, Anna hurries away, black-clad, winding in and out among the pines. Banks run steep into a lake, and the cry of an osprey pierces the air. Fredrik, her lover, waits in a deserted cabin.
Sixty years later, Anna gives refuge to a young niece, whose marriage is falling apart. Fredrik is long since dead. She still blames him for the death of their child, yet she misses his scent that would linger on her skin, like the moon that shone on the snow and colored it blue.
Each day she visits the child’s grave, an old woman in a beret and a tweed jacket. Time after time her thoughts return to the past. Was she wrong to break the rules? How did she go on living when all seemed lost?
“Something intriguing and gripping flows through every page of this unique work of fiction. The atmosphere is rather hard and almost melancholic, but Anna is the bright, feisty character whose strength and determination overrule the morose rules and regulations of her community, in attitude if not in actual application. Beautifully crafted.” — Viviane Crystal, The Historical Novels Review
“Rich description, focus on tiny details, and pithy summations of the characters make it hard for the reader to believe that this is not actually a memoir, so totally does the author inhabit the world of which she writes.” — Annie Whitehead, Review, Discovering Diamonds
“A subtle and poignant novel set in a small town in Sweden during World War I, and 60 years later, wherein a woman reflects on her life choices and their long-reaching consequences.” — Mrs. Dalloway’s Bookstore
Details
Details
Bink Books
232 pp. ● 6×9
$15.95 (pb) ● $9.99 (eb)
ISBN 978-1-960373-53-3 (pb)
FICTION/ Family Life/General
FICTION/ Literary
Publication date: June 2018
“I was completely enchanted by the Swedish lore and atmosphere. This storyline creates a sense of mystery and intrigue and evokes mood and expectation fused with themes of birth, death, history, religion, and war. This is a classic tale and each character is brilliantly written so that they remind us of the eminent frailties of human nature.” — Review, Lori’s Book Loft
“The author cleverly draws the power of society to make people conform, the conflict between tradition and change, and the hidden lives lived out in full view.” — Review, It’s Good To Read
“When Anna decides to go up against the village of Hult for the sake of love, she must pay a high price, one that is slowly revealed in beautiful story-telling and prose. I loved the ever-presence of nature and being transported into the thrum of village and farm life, the way everyone’s lives are bound together through the generations. No spoilers here, except to say about the ending—powerful, searing, magnificent really.” — Pam Reitman, Author of Charlotte Paints Her Life: A Novel
Birgitta Hjalmarson and her husband live north of San Francisco, in a house on a hill, overlooking the ocean. When not writing, she walks along the bluff and up into the forest, alone or with friends. Tutoring an eight-year-old boy keeps her grounded. She studied Swedish, English and German Literature, earning Master’s Degrees from the University of Lund, Sweden, and the University of California at Davis. While covering the San Francisco art beat as a contributing editor for Art & Auction in New York, she also wrote Artful Players, a book on early California art, published by Balcony Press. Turning to fiction, she drew on memories of her native Sweden, where she spent her childhood summers in a village much like the one we encounter in Fylgia. Sarah Orne Jewett’s words to Willa Cather still hold true: “Of course, one day you will write about your own country. In the meantime, get all you can. One must know the world so well before one can know the parish.”
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