A Long Journey to a New Home

Driven by grinding poverty in the 1860s, the Ytterhorn family of sharecroppers in northern Norway sells the furniture to pay for a passage and the promise of a better life in North Dakota. With their scant belongings and determination against all odds, they typify the migrants' experience in a moving and vivid story. And it is a very long journey, beset by tragedy and hardship. During the sea voyage, young Ma Ytterhorn dies from childbirth fever and her husband doubts his decision to submit his family to such a perilous undertaking. He, the new baby and his other children, call upon his wife's best friend to come out and join them. They then together face the winter trek overland by wagon. Along the way they encounter plenty of helping hands and, eventually, land to cultivate, a new homestead and a new beginning.