The Master of Hestviken, Volume IV: The Son Avenger

The Master of Hestviken tetralogy, set in thirteenth-century Norway, is the story of Olav Audunsson, a man whose life is a chronicle of conflict: between the brutal facts of the fading pagan order and the ascendant light of Christianity, between violence and peace, fidelity and betrayal, transgression and redemption.

The Son Avenger follows Olav into old age and the resolution of his life. For all its faults and failures, its tragedies and travails, the years of Olav’s earthly pilgrimage have not been wholly unfruitful: with him still in the twilight of his years are his son and daughter. Even in this, however, sorrow abides, for Eirik and Cecilia―like their mother and father before them―find that the ways of love and happiness are not easy. Thus does Olav’s secret sin still cry out for vengeance―a cry Olav must heed if he is to meet the Justice which he has so long dreaded and receive the Mercy which alone can grant him peace at the end of his days.

Considered by Undset to be her best work―surpassing even Kristin Lavransdatter, inspiration for her Nobel Prize in Literature―The Master of Hestviken captures the manners, morals, and spirit of its age, firmly grasping the basic realities of human character and history and creating a protagonist and a world of intense reality. Hailed as a triumph of fiction, The Master of Hestviken typifies Undset’s talent for seeing far into past and future alike and rendering “both the darkness which lies before them and the way through to the light beyond.”