Originally published in Sweden in 1936, this novel is told through the eyes of seven-year-old Mia, as she observes her mother's relationship with her handsome but hard-drinking and unfaithful husband.Booklist calls the novel, "a poignant, yet unsettling documentary story that transcends time and place in its depiction of the struggles of the working poor, deserving of a place alongside such notables as Sinclair Lewis, Ole Rolvaag, and John Steinbeck."