Carl has always cared for her & his visit soothes the loneliness of her life. But where her collar falls away from her neck, or where her sleeves are pushed back from her wrist, the skin is of such smoothness and whiteness as none but Swedish women ever possess skin with the freshness of the snow itself.Īlexandra is pleased when Carl Linstrum returns to The Divide after years away. Her face is always tanned in summer, for her sunbonnet is oftener on her arm than on her head. It is so curly that fiery ends escape from the braids and make her head look like on of the big double sunflowers that fringe her vegetable garden.

But she still has the same calmness and deliberation of manner, the same clear eyes, and she still wears her hair in two braids wound round her head. She seems sunnier and more vigorous than she did as a young girl.

Her figure is fuller and she has more color. Her childhood friendship with Emil has continued & she admires Alexandra's calm efficiency at the head of her household.Īlexandra herself has changed very little. Alexandra's neighbour, Marie Shabata, is an attractive, vivacious young woman who married a handsome man who soon turned surly & unpredictable. Alexandra is determined to send Emil to college, although Lou & Oscar, unimaginative as ever, can't see the point. Lou & Oscar are married & settled on their own farms with their families.

She is the owner of a flourishing farm, employing farmhands & training young Swedish girls as servants. Sixteen years later, Alexandra's determination has paid off. After John's death, there are several hard years but Alexandra is determined to keep the land they have & she convinces her brothers to take out a mortgage to buy more land when other farmers, including their neighbours the Linstrums, are selling out. They agree with their father's last wish, that Alexandra will run the farm. Lou & Oscar are good workers but unimaginative. She is calm & sensible, dismissive of the admiration of a passer-by & preoccupied by her father's illness. She comforts her youngest brother, Emil, when his kitten is chased up a pole outside the general store & asks her friend, Carl Linstrum, to rescue it. We first see Alexandra in the role that will become familiar - taking charge of a situation. He leaves the direction of the farm's future to his daughter, Alexandra, a capable young woman who has the vision that is lacking in her two brothers, Lou & Oscar. After several tough years farming on The Divide, struggling against poor crops & bad weather, John is dying. They settled in Nebraska where there were many other European migrant communities - German, Bohemian, Norwegian. John Bergson emigrated from Sweden with his family in the 1870s.

0 pioneers