Charlotte Lowenskiold

Charlotte Lowenskiold is bright and warm-hearted; her betrothed, the curate Karl-Artur Ekenstedt, is handsome and eloquent — and consumed by a fanatical piety that leaves no room for ordinary human kindness. Goaded by the jealous, deceptively meek organist's wife Thea Sundler, he breaks their engagement and swears in his fury to marry the first woman he meets on the road, the Dalecarlian girl Anna Svärd. To shield his reputation, Charlotte takes the blame for the rupture upon herself — and is shunned by the parish until the rich, clear-sighted ironmaster Schagerström sees her true worth.

Set in 1830s Värmland, this is a sharp, compassionate study of false piety and genuine goodness, and of how gossip can ruin a life in a small community.

Selma Lagerlöf — the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature (1909) — was at the height of her powers in this second part of the Lowenskiold trilogy, first published in 1925. This translation renders her voice — intimate, ironic, and unerring — in modern English.