Book Beginnings: The Free World by David Bezmozgis

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Not only does Gilion host the European Reading Challenge and TBR 26 in 26 Challenge on her Rose City Reader blog but also Book Beginnings on Friday. While I’m no stranger to her European Reading Challenge, a few years ago I decided to finally participate in Book Beginnings on Friday. After taking last week off I’ve returned with another post.

For Book Beginnings on Friday Gilion asks us to simply “share the opening sentence (or so) of the book you are reading this week, or just a book that caught your fancy and you want to highlight.”

MY BOOK BEGINNING

Alec Krasnansky stood on the platform of Vienna’s Western Terminal while, all around him, the representatives of Soviet Jewry—from Tallinn to Tashkent—roiled, snarled, and elbowed to deposit their belongings onto the waiting train.

Last week I featured Alexandra Richie’s 2013 Warsaw 1944: Hitler, Himmler, and the Warsaw Uprising. Before that it was Françoise Frenkel’s 2019 A Bookshop in Berlin: The Rediscovered Memoir of One Woman’s Harrowing Escape from the Nazis. This week it’s David Bezmozgis’s 2011 historical novel The Free World.

This week’s selection, like Kim Barnes’s In the Kingdom of Men and Tom Rob Smith’s The Secret Speech I found in the discard bin at my public library. For the longest time I found this practice of discarding perfectly good books disturbing. But now I’ve concluded if they’re gonna keep throwing out cool books I might as well keep taking them. Considering my strong interest in the history of oppressed Soviet Jewry grabbing this little freebie was a no-brainer. I’m guessing this will make great follow-up reading to Lev Golinkin’s 2014 memoir A Backpack, A Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka as well as Gal Beckerman’s 2010 outstanding work of history When They Come for Us, We’ll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry. Plus, I can apply this novel to a number of reading challenges including the Immigration Reading Challenge.

Here’s what Amazon has to say about The Free World.

Summer, 1978. Brezhnev sits like a stone in the Kremlin, Israel and Egypt are inching towards peace, and in the bustling, polyglot streets of Rome, strange new creatures have appeared: Soviet Jews who have escaped to freedom through a crack in the Iron Curtain. Among the thousands who have landed in Italy to secure visas for new lives in the West are the members of the Krasnansky family — three generations of Russian Jews.

There is Samuil, an old Communist and Red Army veteran, who reluctantly leaves the country to which he has dedicated himself body and soul; Karl, his elder son, a man eager to embrace the opportunities emigration affords; Alec, his younger son, a carefree playboy for whom life has always been a game; and Polina, Alec’s new wife, who has risked the most by breaking with her old family to join this new one. Together, they will spend six months in Rome — their way station and purgatory. They will immerse themselves in the carnival of emigration, in an Italy rife with love affairs and ruthless hustles, with dislocation and nostalgia, with the promise and peril of a new life. Through the unforgettable Krasnansky family, David Bezmozgis has created an intimate portrait of a tumultuous era.

The Colony of Good Hope by Kim Leine

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Wanting something I could apply towards multiple reading challenges like the European, Historical Fiction and Books in Translation reading challenges back in 2024 I grabbed a Kindle edition of Danish-Norwegian author Kim Leine’s 2019 historical novel The Colony of Good Hope. Set in the mid-18th century it tells the story of Denmark’s largely unsuccessful attempt to colonize the remote Arctic island from the perspective of an extensive cast of individuals ranging from the colony’s Lutheran chaplain to an indigenous shaman. After finishing it late last week I’d have to say the jury is still out whether or not I truly enjoyed this novel. That aside, I thought author did an admirable job painting a detailed picture of a colonial endeavor doomed from the start thanks to the pitifully small investment in resources both human and material forced to contend with the twin ravages of disease and harsh environment.

Hoping to exploit the island’s purported bounty of natural resources Denmark’s King in 1728 decrees that a colony be established in Greenland. To settle this newly-acquired realm dozens of men are plucked from the kingdom’s jail and paired off with women recently released from a female confinement facility, many of them former prostitutes. After a mass wedding the nuptials are then put on a boat and transported to Greenland. Here this shanghaied band of benighted ex cons and former sex workers are ordered to  build a colony. Bereft of the necessary skills, motivation and helpful resources one by one they succumb to malnutrition, disease, violence and above all brutal Arctic weather.

The Colony of Good Hope is a vivid reminder colonialism throughout history inevitably lead to clashes of cultures. Commonly this is manifest in religion as  indigenous beliefs are forced to compete with the colonizers’ Christianity. In the fledgling colony Lutheran missionary Hans Egede labored for years unsuccessfully to convert native Greenlanders. Meanwhile his religious counterpart shaman Aappaluttoq is quite content in his animist beliefs and loathes his own son was taken by Egede and raised as a Christian. Not only are Egede and his fellow Lutherans entrusted with converting the indigenous Greenlanders they also dream of bringing the true faith to the fabled forgotten communities of Viking settlers whose practiced Christianity predates the Reformation. Lastly, this being waning days of pre-modernity whispers of anti-semitism and even witchcraft are heard from time to time in the colony frequently leading to injurious results.

Despite having mixed feelings about The Colony of Good Hope after discovering it’s one part of a larger trilogy I’m tempted to explore the other two novels. If and when I do you’ll be sure to read about it on this blog.

Library Loot

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Even though still I’m working my way through Fareed Zakaria’s Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present as well as Moudhy Al-Rashid’s Between Two Rivers: Ancient Mesopotamia and the Birth of History and Alexandra Richie’s Warsaw 1944: Hitler, Himmler, and the Warsaw Uprising that didn’t stop me from dropping by the library this week and borrowing three more books. As always I hope to be apply these towards a number of reading challenges. Looks like that towering stack of library books by my reading chair isn’t going away anytime soon and just got a bit taller.

A Bookseller in Madrid by Mario Escobar (2025) – I want to apply this historical novel towards a number of reading challenges but especially the Bookish Books Reading Challenge.

The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel (2020) – Another book I hope to apply towards multiple reading challenges. I’ve had my eye on it for the last couple of months and I think now’s the time to finally read it.

Some People Need Killing: A Memoir of Murder in My Country by Patricia Evangelista (2023) – Another book I’ve had my eye on.  I’ll be reading Evangelista’s first hand account of authoritarian rule in the Philippines for the Southeast Asia category of Book’d Out‘s Nonfiction Reader Challenge.

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted Claire from The Captive Reader and Sharlene from Real Life Reading to encourage bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write-up your post, steal the Library Loot icon and link your post using the Mr. Linky on Sharlene’s blog.

Book Beginnings: Warsaw 1944 by Alexandra Richie

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Not only does Gilion host the European Reading Challenge and TBR 26 in 26 Challenge on her Rose City Reader blog but also Book Beginnings on Friday. While I’m no stranger to her European Reading Challenge, a few years ago I decided to finally participate in Book Beginnings on Friday. After taking last week off I’ve returned with another post.

For Book Beginnings on Friday Gilion asks us to simply “share the opening sentence (or so) of the book you are reading this week, or just a book that caught your fancy and you want to highlight.”

MY BOOK BEGINNING

One 1 August 1944 Adolf Hitler was at his headquarters, the Wolfsschanze (Wolf’s Lair) at Rastenburg, deep in East Prussia, and he was busy.

Last week I featured Françoise Frenkel’s 2019 A Bookshop in Berlin: The Rediscovered Memoir of One Woman’s Harrowing Escape from the Nazis. Before that it was Moudhy Al-Rashid’s 2025 Between Two Rivers: Ancient Mesopotamia and the Birth of History. This week it’s Alexandra Richie’s 2013 Warsaw 1944: Hitler, Himmler, and the Warsaw Uprising.

Just like last week, if this book looks familiar it’s because I featured it last month in a Library Loot post. Warsaw 1944 caught my eye because one of my many reading goals of 2026 is to read a book or two about the Warsaw Uprising. I’m looking to apply it towards both the European Reading and Nonfiction Reader challenges. Weighing in well over 700 pages it’s a bit of a tome. But so far it reads well and therefore I’m optimistic I’ll like it.

Here’s what Amazon has to say about Warsaw 1944.

In 1943, the Nazis liquidated Warsaw’s Jewish ghetto. A year later, they threatened to complete the city’s destruction by deporting its remaining residents. A sophisticated and cosmopolitan community a thousand years old was facing its final days―and then opportunity struck. As Soviet soldiers turned back the Nazi invasion of Russia and began pressing west, the underground Polish Home Army decided to act. Taking advantage of German disarray and seeking to forestall the absorption of their country into the Soviet empire, they chose to liberate the city of Warsaw for themselves.

Warsaw 1944 tells the story of this brave, and errant, calculation. For more than sixty days, the Polish fighters took over large parts of the city and held off the SS’s most brutal forces. But in the end, their efforts were doomed. Scorned by Stalin and unable to win significant support from the Western Allies, the Polish Home Army was left to face the full fury of Hitler, Himmler, and the SS. The crackdown that followed was among the most brutal episodes of history’s most brutal war, and the celebrated historian Alexandra Richie depicts this tragedy in riveting detail. Using a rich trove of primary sources, Richie relates the terrible experiences of individuals who fought in the uprising and perished in it. Her clear-eyed narrative reveals the fraught choices and complex legacy of some of World War II’s most unsung heroes.

Book Beginnings: A Bookshop in Berlin by Françoise Frenkel

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Not only does Gilion host the European Reading Challenge and TBR 26 in 26 Challenge on her Rose City Reader blog but also Book Beginnings on Friday. While I’m no stranger to her European Reading Challenge, a few years ago I decided to finally participate in Book Beginnings on Friday. After taking last week off I’ve returned with another post.

For Book Beginnings on Friday Gilion asks us to simply “share the opening sentence (or so) of the book you are reading this week, or just a book that caught your fancy and you want to highlight.”

MY BOOK BEGINNING

I don’t know exactly when I first felt the calling to be a bookseller. As a very young girl, I could spend hours leang through a picture book or a large illustrated tome.

Last week I featured Moudhy Al-Rashid’s 2025 Between Two Rivers: Ancient Mesopotamia and the Birth of History. Before that it was David Greene’s 2014 Midnight in Siberia: A Train Journey into the Heart of Russia. This week it’s Françoise Frenkel’s 2019 A Bookshop in Berlin: The Rediscovered Memoir of One Woman’s Harrowing Escape from the Nazis.

Just like last week, if this book looks familiar it’s because I featured it last month in the same Library Loot post. It was hard for me to resist A Bookshop in Berlin for several reasons. One, I have a weakness for books about, or novels set in bookstores.  Two, I can apply this book towards a number of reading challenges including the Bookish Books, Books in Translation and Immigration reading challenges. Three, who can say no to a book originally published in 1945 that was forgotten but later rediscovered tucked away in an attic almost 60 years later? No wonder I can’t to dive in to this intriguing memoir.

Here’s what Amazon has to say about A Bookshop in Berlin.

In 1921, Françoise Frenkel—a Jewish woman from Poland—fulfills a dream. She opens La Maison du Livre, Berlin’s first French bookshop, attracting artists and diplomats, celebrities and poets. The shop becomes a haven for intellectual exchange as Nazi ideology begins to poison the culturally rich city. In 1935, the scene continues to darken. First come the new bureaucratic hurdles, followed by frequent police visits and book confiscations.

Françoise’s dream finally shatters on Kristallnacht in November 1938, as hundreds of Jewish shops and businesses are destroyed. La Maison du Livre is miraculously spared, but fear of persecution eventually forces Françoise on a desperate, lonely flight to Paris. When the city is bombed, she seeks refuge across southern France, witnessing countless horrors: children torn from their parents, mothers throwing themselves under buses. Secreted away from one safe house to the next, Françoise survives at the heroic hands of strangers risking their lives to protect her.

Book Beginnings: Between Two Rivers by Moudhy Al-Rashid

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Not only does Gilion host the European Reading Challenge and TBR 26 in 26 Challenge on her Rose City Reader blog but also Book Beginnings on Friday. While I’m no stranger to her European Reading Challenge, a few years ago I decided to finally participate in Book Beginnings on Friday. After taking last week off I’ve returned with another post.

For Book Beginnings on Friday Gilion asks us to simply “share the opening sentence (or so) of the book you are reading this week, or just a book that caught your fancy and you want to highlight.”

MY BOOK BEGINNING

A stepped pyramid soars almost a hundred feet above the sprawling ruins of the city of Ur, which once sat at the mouth of the Euphrates River in the Sandy expanse of what is now southern Iraq.

Last week I featured David Greene’s 2014 Midnight in Siberia: A Train Journey into the Heart of Russia. Before that it was Jim Dent’s 2007 Twelve Mighty Orphans: The Inspiring True Story of the Mighty Mites Who Ruled Texas Football. This week it’s Moudhy Al-Rashid’s Between Two Rivers: Ancient Mesopotamia and the Birth of History.

If this week’s selection looks familiar it’s because I featured this book last month in one of my Library Loot posts. Believe it or not, I was motivated to borrow Between Two Rivers out of nostalgia. Decades ago I used to buy beat-up old used paperbacks at a bookshop on my way home from work. A number of these happened to be books about ancient history and the adventures of early archeologists. With those fond memories in mind I found this book hard to resist. Plus, upon closer inspection I learned the author has been a guest on the highly entertaining BBC podcast You’re Dead to Me. With so much of my reading lately devoted to the 20th century a good book on ancient Mesopotamia sounds like a pleasant departure.

Here’s what Amazon has to say about Between Two Rivers.

Thousands of years ago, in a part of the world we now call ancient Mesopotamia, people began writing things down for the very first time.

What they left behind, in a vast region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, preserves leaps in human ingenuity, like the earliest depiction of a wheel and the first approximation of pi. But they also capture breathtakingly intimate, raw, and relatable moments, like a dog’s paw prints as it accidentally stepped into fresh clay, or the imprint of a child’s teeth.

In Between Two Rivers, historian Dr. Moudhy Al-Rashid reveals what these ancient people chose to record about their lives, allowing us to brush hands with them millennia later. We find a lullaby to soothe a baby, instructions for exorcising a ghost, countless receipts for beer, and the messy writing of preschoolers. We meet an enslaved person negotiating their freedom, an astronomer tracing the movement of the planets, a princess who may have created the world’s first museum, and a working mother struggling with “the juggle” in 1900 BCE.

Book Beginnings: Midnight in Siberia by David Greene

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Not only does Gilion host the European Reading Challenge and TBR 26 in 26 Challenge on her Rose City Reader blog but also Book Beginnings on Friday. While I’m no stranger to her European Reading Challenge, a few years ago I decided to finally participate in Book Beginnings on Friday. After taking last week off I’ve returned with another post.

For Book Beginnings on Friday Gilion asks us to simply “share the opening sentence (or so) of the book you are reading this week, or just a book that caught your fancy and you want to highlight.”

MY BOOK BEGINNING

I struggle awake, and there she is.

Russia.

Last week I featured Jim Dent’s 2007 book Twelve Mighty Orphans: The Inspiring True Story of the Mighty Mites Who Ruled Texas Football. Before that it was Danish author Kim Leine’s 2022 work of historical fiction The Colony of Good Hope. This week it’s David Greene’s 2014 Midnight in Siberia: A Train Journey into the Heart of Russia.

Much like before if this week’s selection looks familiar it’s because I featured this book last week as one of 10 random books I grabbed off the shelf. Besides being one several dozen or so books I’ve picked up over the last few years at the annual church yard sale it’s part of what I’m tentatively calling the Beringia Reading Project. For this I’m hoping to read a series of books about, or novels set in Alaska, the Bering Sea and Siberia. Like so many of my intended reading projects it will probably end up being little more than a pipe dream. But maybe 2026 is the year I pull it off.

Here’s what Amazon has to say about Midnight in Siberia.  

Midnight in Siberia chronicles David Greene’s journey on the Trans-Siberian Railway, a 6,000-mile cross-country trip from Moscow to the Pacific port of Vladivostok. In quadruple-bunked cabins and stopover towns sprinkled across the country’s snowy landscape, Greene speaks with ordinary Russians about how their lives have changed in the post-Soviet years.

We meet Nadezhda, an entrepreneur who runs a small hotel in Ishim, fighting through corrupt layers of bureaucracy every day. Greene spends a joyous evening with a group of babushkas who made international headlines as runners-up at the Eurovision singing competition. They sing Beatles covers, alongside their traditional songs, finding that music and companionship can heal wounds from the past. In Novosibirsk, Greene has tea with Alexei, who runs the carpet company his mother began after the Soviet collapse and has mixed feelings about a government in which his family has done quite well. And in Chelyabinsk, a hunt for space debris after a meteorite landing leads Greene to a young man orphaned as a teenager, forced into military service, and now figuring out if any of his dreams are possible.

Book Beginnings: Twelve Mighty Orphans by Jim Dent

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Not only does Gilion host the European Reading Challenge and TBR 26 in 26 Challenge on her Rose City Reader blog but also Book Beginnings on Friday. While I’m no stranger to her European Reading Challenge, a few years ago I decided to finally participate in Book Beginnings on Friday. After taking last week off I’ve returned with another post.

For Book Beginnings on Friday Gilion asks us to simply “share the opening sentence (or so) of the book you are reading this week, or just a book that caught your fancy and you want to highlight.”

MY BOOK BEGINNING

The redbrick buildings of the old Masonic Home are boarded up and the place is now quiet. Down the hill, the dairy barn is closed, the peach orchard has withered away, and the empty practice
field is the color of summer hay.

Last week I featured Danish author Kim Leine’s 2022 work of historical fiction The Colony of Good Hope. Before that it was Gordon Corera’s 2019 Russians Among Us: Sleeper Cells, Ghost Stories, and the Hunt for Putin’s Spies. This week it’s Jim Dent’s 2007 book Twelve Mighty Orphans: The Inspiring True Story of the Mighty Mites Who Ruled Texas Football.

If this week’s selection looks familiar it’s because I featured this book back in November as one of 10 random books I grabbed off the shelf. As I mentioned in the post this book was given to me a number of years ago by my dear friend Tom Andrews Sr. Over the course of his long and distinguished career he wore many hats including president of the California Historical Society and dean of Westmont College. The father of a good friend of mine, we first met when he was in the twilight of his career teaching history at Azusa Pacific University while handling the library’s rare book acquisitions. Whenever the two of us visited we’d talk about books for hours, and after every session my to be read list (TBR) grew massively. If he recommended a book you KNEW it was good.

Unfortunately, last Saturday his son texted me to let me this good man had passed away. With that in mind I’d like to honor him with this post. Hopefully, over the course of 2026 I’ll continue honoring his memory by featuring more books he’s recommended to me over the course of our wonderful conversations.

Here’s what Amazon has to say about Twelve Mighty Orphans.  

More than a century ago, a school was constructed in Fort Worth, Texas, for the purpose of housing and educating the orphans of Texas Freemasons. It was a humble project that for years existed quietly on a hillside east of town. Life at the Masonic Home was about to change, though, with the arrival of a lean, bespectacled coach by the name of Rusty Russell. Here was a man who could bring rain in the midst of a drought. Here was a man who, in virtually no time at all, brought the orphans’ story into the homes of millions of Americans.

In the 1930s and 1940s, there was nothing bigger in Texas high school football than the Masonic Home Mighty Mites―a group of orphans bound together by hardship and death. These youngsters, in spite of being outweighed by at least thirty pounds per man, were the toughest football team around. They began with nothing―not even a football―yet in a few years were playing for the state championship on the highest level of Texas football. This is a winning tribute to a courageous band of underdogs from a time when America desperately needed fresh hope and big dreams.

The First 10 Books I Randomly Grabbed from My Shelf

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Several months ago Deb on her blog Readerbuzz featured 10 random books from her shelf, and I liked her idea so much I did the same. Putting that post together was a lot of fun and after getting some positive feedback I did it two more times. In the mood to do another of these posts earlier today I pulled 10 random books off my shelves and here they are. Just like last time I’m hoping this will inspire me to finally crack of few of these books open and give ’em a chance.

The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America by Louis Menand (2001) – I probably bought this one at a Friends of the Library book sale in Portland. Since I’ve been wanting to read more intellectual history I should give it a try.

To the Finland Station: A Study in the Writing and Acting of History by Edmund Wilson (1940/2003) – One of my buddies is a retired sociology professor and after he retired he let me pillage his academic library. This one he especially encouraged me to take. Believe it or not the foreword is by the above-mentioned Luis Menand.

My European Family: The First 54,000 Years by Karin Bojs (2017) – Grabbed this one late last year at the Friends of the (Monmouth) Library book sale. I have a hankering for this deep history/ancient DNA kind of stuff. Translated from Swedish I could apply this towards both the European and Books in Translation reading challenges.

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (1997) – I started this one on a flight to Las Vegas and sadly never finished it. Time for me to give it another shot. If I do I should follow it up with her 2025 highly acclaimed memoir Mother Mary Comes to Me.

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho (1988/1998) – One of many books I feel everyone has read but me. On Saturday afternoon I stopped at a garage sale up the street from my mom’s old house and ended up buying small pile of books. The kind woman hosting the sale threw this in for free.

Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton (1948/1959)- Another book I think everyone has read but me. I probably bought this at yet another Friends of the Library book sale in Portland. Long overdue to be read.

Falling Leaves: The Memoir of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter by Adeline Yen Mah (1999) – Bought this one a church book sale. Thinking about reading it for Introverted Reader’s new Immigration Reading Challenge.

Midnight in Siberia: A Train Journey into the Heart of Russia by David Greene (2014) – Yet another book I bought at the annual yard sale put on by the Lutheran church in nearby Independence, Oregon. I’ve been thinking about doing a series featuring books about, or set in Siberia, Alaska and the Bering Sea. If and when I do this book is at the top of the list.

A Wicked Company: The Forgotten Radicalism of the European Enlightenment by Philipp Blom (2010) – Used a gift certificate to buy this one from Powell’s in Portland and it’s sat unread on the self for years. Maybe 2026 is the year I finally read it.

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini (2007) – A buddy I worked with gave me this a long time ago. Considering how much I enjoyed Hosseini’s earlier novel The Kite Runner I’m surprised I still haven’t read it.

There you go, 10 random books from my personal library. Who knows, at this rate this might wind up being regular feature on my blog. Stay tuned and find out.

Book Beginnings: The Colony of Good Hope by Kim Leine

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Not only does Gilion host the European Reading Challenge and TBR 26 in 26 Challenge on her Rose City Reader blog but also Book Beginnings on Friday. While I’m no stranger to her European Reading Challenge, a few years ago I decided to finally participate in Book Beginnings on Friday. After taking last week off I’ve returned with another post.

For Book Beginnings on Friday Gilion asks us to simply “share the opening sentence (or so) of the book you are reading this week, or just a book that caught your fancy and you want to highlight.”

MY BOOK BEGINNING

I am Aappaluttoq, the Red One. I can go anywhere, as the priest says, albeit his words are scornfully meant, and yet it is true, as he well knows, though he will never admit it.

Last week I featured Gordon Corera’s 2019 Russians Among Us: Sleeper Cells, Ghost Stories, and the Hunt for Putin’s Spies. Before that it was Elyse Graham’s 2024 New York Times best-seller Book and Dagger: How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II. This week it’s Danish author Kim Leine’s 2022 work of historical fiction The Colony of Good Hope.

With Trump and his minions threatening to go to war with NATO over Greenland perhaps it’s only appropriate this week’s selection is an historical novel set against the frozen landscape of that arctic island. Last year, wanting something I could apply towards not only the European and Historical Fiction, but also the Books in Translation reading challenges I grabbed a Kindle edition of The Colony of Good Hope . Told from the perspective of a dozen or so different characters you have to pay close attention to what’s going on. But for the most part it’s been a satisfying read, and as soon I’m finished I’ll be posting my impressions for all to read.

Here’s what Amazon has to say about The Colony of Good Hope.  

1728: The Danish King Fredrik IV sends a governor to Greenland to establish a colony, in the hopes of exploiting the country’s allegedly vast natural resources. A few merchants, a barber-surgeon, two trainee priests, a blacksmith, some carpenters and soldiers and a dozen hastily married couples go with him.

The missionary priest Hans Egede has already been in Greenland for several years when the new colonists arrive. He has established a mission there, but the converts are few. Among those most hostile to Egede is the shaman Aappaluttoq, whose own son was taken by the priest and raised in the Christian faith as his own. Thus the great rift between two men, and two ways of life, is born.

The newly arrived couples – men and women plucked from prison – quickly sink into a life of almost complete dissolution, and soon unsanitary conditions, illness and death bring the colony to its knees. Through the starvation and the epidemics that beset the colony, Egede remains steadfast in his determination – willing to sacrifice even those he loves for the sake of his mission.