Peter Olaf

America is a land of promise, filled with adventure and overflowing with riches, thought young Peter Olaf. So in 1895, at the age of seventeen, he left his family and girlfriend to board a ship for the new world.In the next ten years Peter mutated from a naive, young, Swedish immigrant, swinging an axe in a logging camp, to a man of wealth and prestige. Along the way he encountered and overcame fearsome challenges and tragedies and the deepest personal losses and betrayals. But he also built wonderfully strong friendships and family relationships. He experienced loves that were sometimes intensely passionate, sometimes gentle or bittersweet, but only one would last a lifetime. Peter Olaf engages a rich blend of characters to carry Peters story from Sweden to Minnesota and back, and even to a Louisiana prison. The personalities are vivid and strong, from lumberjack to Indian healer, flirtatious bosss daughter to gentle half-breed girl, businessman mentor to formidable police inspector. Peter Olaf is an account of a young immigrants early life, but it is also a study of the hardy people who worked and loved in an earlier time of our nation.

Richard Grabmeier lives in a lakes region of central Minnesota. The grandson of Swedish and Austrian immigrants, he enjoys reading historical literature of all types. Now retired from his career, he raises terrier dogs and writes historical fiction. The youthful immigration of his Swedish grandfather inspired Peter Olaf.