Swedish for Beginners - A Novel

When her father dies, young Irishwoman Maud Walsh learns that her late mother, the beautiful Eleonore, was Swedish. She travels to Stockholm to find her unknown Swedish family, where she discovers not only a new country, but a mysterious past. Maud is given letters Eleonore wrote when she was very young and living in Australia over thirty years earlier. The story that emerges of a rebellious and somewhat immoral woman shatters Maud's fantasy of the fairy tale princess she had always believed her mother to have been. As she reads on, Maud learns that Lukas, the handsome older man she has just met, was deeply in love with Eleonore in his youth. Maud's attraction to him is marred by Eleonore's revelations. When Maud reads the last letter, she finally learns the truth about both her own parentage and Lukas' involvement with her mother. The story is set in Stockholm, its beautiful archipelago, and in Australia.