The second volume in the Nobel Prizewinning writers epic of medieval Norway, finely capturing Undsets fluid, natural style in a new English translation, the first in nearly a century

As Norway moves into the fourteenth century, the kingdom continues to be racked by political turmoil and bloody family vendettas that serve as the backdrop for Sigrid Undsets masterful story about Olav Audunssn and Ingunn Steinfinnsdatter. Betrothed as children and raised as foster siblings, their unbridled love for each other sets in motion a series of dire eventswith a legacy of betrayal, murder, and disgrace that will echo for generations. In Providence, the second of Olav Audunssns four volumes, Olav settles in at his ancestral estate of Hestviken and soon brings Ingunn home as his wife. Both hope to put their troubles behind them as they start a new life together, but the crimes and shameful secrets of the past have a long reach and a tenacious hold. The consequences of sin, suspicion, and familial obligations may prove a greater threat to the pairs happiness than even their long years of separation.

Set in a time when royalty and religion vie for power, and bloodlines and loyalties are effectively law, Providence summons a powerful picture of Northern life in the medieval era, as the Swedish Academy noted in awarding Undset the Nobel Prize. Conveying both the intimate drama of Olav and Ingunns marriage and the epic sweep of their story, it is at once a moving and vivid recreation of a vanished world tainted by bloodshed and haunted by sin and retribution.

As with her classic Kristin Lavransdatter, Sigrid Undset immersed herself in legal, religious, and historical writings to create in Olav Audunssn an astoundingly authentic and compelling portrait of Norwegian life in the Middle Ages. And as in her translation of Kristin Lavransdatter, Tiina Nunnally does full justice to Undsets fluid prose. Undsets writing style is by turns straightforward and delicately lyrical, conveying the natural world, the complex culture, and the fraught emotional territory against which Olavs story inexorably unfolds.