Many Minnesotans of Swedish descent are familiar with Vilhelm Moberg’s “The Emigrants,” a mid-20th-century series of novels portraying the achievements and disappointments of Swedish immigrant life in rural Minnesota a century earlier. The story of Karl Oskar and Kristina Nilsson became a deeply moving two-part film series starring Max von Sydow and Liv Ullmann.

Ola Larsmo’s epic novel “Swede Hollow” is a stirring complement to that work and a timely reminder of the trials and uncertainties often faced by immigrants — and the courage they show in overcoming them. These Swedes of the early 1900s shared that shanty-pocked stretch along a fetid Phalen Creek with equally poor Italian and Irish immigrants, but the Swedes were most numerous and gave the place its name.

Read the whole review.