Mysterious Builder of Seattle Landmarks

After decades of believing her mother’s tale that Danish immigrant Hans Pederson left them penniless, Paula uncovers the truth about her father’s wealth and prolific contributions to Seattle. She discovers her mysterious father’s boom to bust life in the early 1900s, as she grapples with family secrets and heartbreaking deception in this very personal memoir.
Her journey spans Seattle, Singapore, Shanghai, Honolulu, New York, New Jersey, Maine and North Carolina. Paula shares nuances of social echelons and how that affects one’s life choices.

Paula Pederson’s discoveries about her father Hans have filled an important gap in regional architectural history knowledge by revealing her father’s many accomplishments in the Pacific Northwest. The publication provides a partial list of a remarkable range and variety of buildings and infrastructure projects that he undertook during a long and successful career—commerce and institutions, hotels, theaters, apartments, schools, bridges and piers. Many of them are still standing, and that reflects on the knowledge and management skills of this prolific contractor.
LARRY KREISMAN, Program Director, Historic Seattle
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"...like a long, newsy letter from a friend...precisely what makes this book so charming and exceptional, and such an addictive read."
Paula Pederson recounts her exhaustive search for the father she never knew in a winding, evocative first-person narrative told “in the moment” as her journey unfolds before the reader with the turn of each page. Dismissed by her mother as “a struggling young architect” who was killed in a car accident and “left us penniless in the middle of the Great Depression,” Domka Huculak kept the identity of the man who fathered her daughter a secret for 60 years until, at the age of 92, she finally disclosed the truth. This incredible, emotional revelation catapulted Paula into the past on an incredible quest that not only would change her life, but change how she would come to see herself.
He was Hans Pederson, one of the leading architects, contractors and builders in the American Northwest, whose far-reaching vision left a distinctive imprint on his adopted Seattle. Pederson helped define the personality of what has become the 18th largest city in the United States today.
But it is the author who we get to know best in a story that begins in Shanghai and ends in Maine. And it is the manner in which Paula tells her story that makes this book read like a long, newsy letter from a friend rather than a biography or more to the point, her autobiography. And this is precisely what makes this book so charming, and exceptional, and such an addictive read.
LAURIE BOGART MORROW, author, The Hardscrabble Chronicles