This was a surprisingly honest, heartwarming story about a young woman from California that ends up running a sheep farm for a year in the countryside of Norway. How she finds herself in that position, how it turns out, and how the people around her were drawn to her and what she was trying to accomplish, all make for a great storytelling arc.
The book has romance, adventure, and exploration. There is life, death, and eating of sheep’s heads. Most of all there is a lot of honesty – telling the good and the bad and owning all of it.
All of this happened in 1972 when the author was twenty years old. Writing this now (in 2024) means that she is recalling events from a long, long time ago. Luckily she had written many letters and I’m sure that correspondence helped to pin down events. Still, I wonder how much was lost (or filled in).
I enjoy books where someone is living or traveling in isolation – this book hit the mark perfectly.
Next I am reading The Salvage by Anbara Salam.
