In her warm and often deliciously funny memoir Prairie Cooks, Carrie Young celebrates the Norwegian American foods of her childhood in an artful blend of reminiscences and recipes. Book jacket.

THE PROMISED LAND is the story of Theodor, a Danish immigrant, who struggles to integrate into the American culture. It is his love-hate story; the awe, the wonder, the ecstasy of experiencing all things new, versus the stress of loneliness, the humiliation of being considered stupid, the agony of being shunned. He works with machines he knows nothing about, with people who speak a language that boggles his mind. Enamoured with American affluence, he strikes out on his own. He lives in a dugout, and plants his corn by hand. He is overjoyed with an unusually large crop, but when he attempts to sell it, the market has collapsed and he is reduced to sharing the grain with his animals. He becomes despondent, depressed. He wants to go home, but he cannot. He had come to America on someone else's papers...

Peder Gustav Tjernagel (1864-1932) recorded these stories in pencil on a school notepad in 1909. The manuscript was later edited by relatives who self-published the book as a family record. In his foreword to The Follinglo Dog Book, Wayne Franklin, professor of English at Northeastern University, places the book in its historical context and addresses our changing attitudes toward the humane treatment of house pets since the nineteenth century.