Though her first few months in America were difficult, Nilda Carlson's life now resembles the images that filled her dreams in Norway. But when she spots the man from her terrifying past in town, her new life and hope for love could come crashing down around her. Did danger follow her across the Atlantic?

A collection of stories, written over a twenty-year period, examines the Vietnamese experience in America as well as questions of home, family, and identity.

Minnesota, 1909. When Signe, her husband, Rune, and their three boys arrive from Norway to help a relative clear his land of lumber, they dream of owning their own farm and building a life in the New World. But Uncle Einar and Aunt Gird are hard, demanding people, and Signe and her family soon find themselves worked nearly to the bone in order to repay the cost of their voyage. At this rate, they will never have land or a life of their own. Signe...

Tired of being asked where she's from, a little girl brings the question to her abuelo. His smiling response is that she comes "from the Pampas, the open, free land . . . from hurricanes and dark storms . . . from this land where our ancestors built a home for all, even when they were in chains because of the color of their skin." Abuelo takes the girl on an imaginative journey through their history and culture, but this doesn't satisfy her, so she...

A woman ahead of her time, Molly Murphy is determined to be a private detective. Having inherited the cases of her deceased mentor Paddy Riley, she's following philandering husbands, tracking down a runaway Dublin debutante, and working in a sweatshop to discover who is purloining dress designs. None of her jobs seem dangerous...at first. When a woman's body is fished out of the East River, Molly fears it's the missing society girl. Then Molly's sometime...

"Edward Dickens, the tenth child of England's most famous author Charles Dickens, has consistently let down his parents. Unable to apply himself at school and adrift in life, the teenaged boy is sent to Australia in the hopes that he can make something of himself--or at least fail out of the public eye. He soon finds himself in the remote Outback, surrounded by Aboriginals, colonials, ex-convicts, ex-soldiers, and very few women. Even on the other...