American from Sweden: The Story of A. V. Swanson - Hardcover

Cain, Betty Swanson

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0809313626 ISBN 13: 9780809313624

Verlag: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987

Inhaltsangabe

Book by Cain Betty Swanson

Über diesen Titel

Reseña del editor

When Axel Svensson moved from his tenement home in Bjuv, Sweden, at the age of eight, to ease his family s financial burden, he began an odyssey that would extend over a quarter-century and thousands of miles.His life as an indentured farmhand made him resolve to improve his lot. With the sense of purpose he was to display throughout his life, he began saving from his meager earnings for passage to America. It took him four years to accumulate enough money for the trip, but when he left Sweden he was a third-class passengernot herded with the impatient and desperate in steerage.In 1911, twenty-year-old Axel Svensson landed in Boston and headed straight to Chicago. There he changed his name to A. V. Swanson, began the study of English, and started his search for a job that would satisfy his need to succeed. That need would have him on the move for the next fourteen years, until he and his young family settled in Ames, Iowa, where he assumed the managership of the local J. C. Penney store.Swanson never returned to Sweden, but during the last years of his life he thought a great deal about the country and family he had left behind, and he shared those memories and stories with his daughter Betty. Cain draws on those private conversations and on her subsequent research in America and Sweden to tell the story of an "American from Sweden.""

Biografía del autor

Betty Swanson Cain has recently retired from the University of California at San Diego.

Über diese Auflage

• Verlag: Southern Illinois University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1987
• ISBN 10: 0809313626
• ISBN 13: 9780809313624
• Einband: Tapa dura
• Anzahl der Seiten: 120