In Papa's Wife, Thyra Ferre Bjorn tells a touching story inspired by her own family, her own father, and especially her own mother. Papa was an upright, old-fashioned, principled pastor of a small church in northern Sweden, handsome and eloquent, but resolutely a bachelor. His dream was to have a large bank account. Mama was the maid who cleaned his house and secretly dreamed of marrying him. Eventually, Mama got her way (as she always did). Their life together was happy and rich with the kinds of treasures that really matter, though Papa had days when he could not quite forgive this spirited, determined woman for coming into his peaceful life and making him ten instead of one.
The book is the story of a family. It tells of the amusing antics and humorous scrapes of children and the things they must learn about life as they grow up. It tells of their immigration from the mountains of Sweden to small-town America and contains humorous anecdotes about their attempts to learn a new language and new customs. At its heart, though, it is the story of a woman: a wife and a mother who pours her love, her prayers, and herself into her husband and her children.
One of our family's long-time favorites (it was the only book we took on our honeymoon), Papa's Wifeis a delightful read and a hard one to forget.
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