Customer Reviews

The Strange American Way

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In 1855, the recently-ordained young Norwegian immigrant pastor Johan Storm Munch and his wife Caja came to Wiota in southern Wisconsin to organize a rural church to serve the enclave of families who had arrived from Norway over the previous few years.

The book, by Peter Munch, grandson of the subject Munch's, consists of 1) a forward relating the very interesting story of how the material was located, 2) letters written between 1855 and 1859 by Caja Munch to her family in Norway; 3) a memoir by the pastor covering the same years as the letters; and 4) an excellent essay by Peter Munch, "Social Class and Acculturation," about the Norwegian immigrant experience, especially that of the group of Lutheran pastors who had arrived to serve the several communities in Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota during the time of the letters.

The book provides a wonderful portrait of both the pastors' families and those of their charges, the farmers struggling to make a living on the land in a new and undeveloped area. There is no shortage of animosity on the side of the educated Munch's toward the less sophisticated farmers and, as we learn in Caja's letters especially, vice versa.

An excellent book on several counts.