Hanna's Daughters - Softcover

Marianne Fredriksson

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0753806789 ISBN 13: 9780753806784

Publisher: Phoenix Press, 1999

Synopsis

Anna has returned from visiting her mother. Restless and unable to sleep, she wanders through her parents' house, revisiting the scenes of her childhood. In a cupboard drawer, folded and pushed away from sight, she finds a sepia photograph of her grandmother, Hanna, whom she remembers as old and forbidding, a silent stranger enveloped in a huge pleated black dress. Now, looking at the features Anna recognises as her own, she realises she is looking at a different woman from the one of her memory. Set against the majestic isolation of the Scandinavian lakes and mountains, this is more than a story of three Swedish women. It is a moving testament of a time forgotten and an epic romance in every sense of the word.

About this title

From the Publisher

This book is really a knockout. I worked on it, but I was really intrigued, particularly after all my freelancers told me how much they loved it. So I read it on the train and was completely engrossed. The characters are wonderful and strange and familiar, and the message is true and compelling.

Eileen Gaffney, Associate Managing Editor

From the Inside Flap

Hanna. Johanna. Anna. Three women, three generations, one family.

A #1 international bestseller in Europe, this luminous, heartfelt novel spans more than a hundred years in the lives of three remarkable women--a daughter, mother, and grandmother--lives shaped by the epic sweep of history and linked through a century of great love and great loss.

As Anna holds vigil at her mother's bedside, she longs for reconciliation--not just with her mother, Johanna, but with her grandmother, Hanna, a woman she never really knew. Determined to piece together the fragments of her past, Anna sifts through tattered letters, cracked diaries, and old photographs, as the vivid lives of Hanna and Johanna at last begin to unfold.

Through shades of memory and history, longing to join the ancient threads of the family tapestry, Anna begins searching for answers to questions that have haunted her for a lifetime. What was it like for her grandmother, Hanna, more than one hundred years ago, when she married a miller and raised an illegitimate child in a staunch, rural community? What drove Anna's own mother, Johanna, once a fiery revolutionary, to settle down and become a housewife? And why did the ties binding Anna to her mother and grandmother drive all three apart--only to bring them back together again?

Rich in insight, and resonating with truth and revelation, Hanna's Daughters is an unforgettable story, exploring the volatile ties of mothers and daughters. If you have ever wanted to connect with the past, or rediscover family, this novel will strike a chord in your heart. Marianne Fredriksson has created nothing short of a masterpiece.

Edition details

• Publisher: Phoenix Press
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0753806789
• ISBN 13: 9780753806784
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320