The Reindeer of Chinese Gardens
A Norwegian woman unveils her colorful life in the Pacific Northwest at the time of the Yukon Gold Rush in this engaging novel. Dagny’s story unfolds through a series of journals she keeps as events occur. Prior to her life in Washington State, she had already seen an amazing panorama of human life as the wife of a sea captain who sailed cargoes and passengers from Norway to Chile and Peru and to ports in China. With the accidental ruin of his ship, her husband finds work along the Pacific coast of the United States when large contingents of people and reindeer arrive looking to travel north.
Against this backdrop, Dagny has plenty of her own adventures in Washington and Alaska. She writes stories for the Norwegian press about life as an American immigrant while simultaneously crossing paths and melding relationships with a Chinese refugee (at the time of the Chinese Exclusion Act), and with a Sami woman from Lapland (then part of northern Norway) who is there at the request of the American government to introduce reindeer into Alaska. Dagny captures not only the twists and turns of her own personal journey from Norway to the U.S., but also the equally compelling stories of her foster children, her friends, her colleagues, and other community members who often made perilous journeys of their own.
The characters in this novel come fully to life in the journals’ pages. Fascinating details about the different cultures intermingling at this time and in this place come to the fore while the common humanity behind these differences is ever present. An entertaining and informative story of Scandinavian and Chinese immigration to the Western U.S. in the late 19th century, this novel will appeal to readers on many levels.
