Thyra Ferré Bjorn was one of my favorite authors growing up. Her book Papa's Wife was such a delight to me that it was the one book my wife and I took to read on our honeymoon in Victoria, BC. It is, by turns, charming, sentimental, hilarious, sad, and wise.
Papa's Daughter continues the story, and other titles add more layers while relaying her simple faith, homespun philosophy, and delight and love of family.
Thyra was one of eight children born on September 12, 1905, to a clergyman in Swedish Lapland. In 1924, her father received a call to a Swedish church in Springfield, Massachusetts, and the family came to America.
Thyra married another native from Sweden, Robert Bjorn. They had two daughters and four grandchildren. Together they made their home in Longmeadow, Massachusetts, where she died at age 69 on Valentines Day, 1975.
She ended up authoring nine popular novels. Her books, largely “fiction based on fact,” as she once described them, included the best-selling Papa's Wife, published in 1955. Others were Papa's Daughter, Mama's Way, Dear Papa, Once Upon a Christmas Tree, This Is My Life, The Home Has a Heart and Then There Grew Up a Generation. Her last book, The Golden Acre, was published posthumously (the month after she died).
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