UW Press Publishes Noted Historical Fiction Novel by Former Seattle Post-Intellegencer Writer
The University of Washington Press, a division of the UW Graduate School, contributes to the cultural and intellectual life of the Pacific Northwest and to the enhancement of the University's reputation worldwide.
During the 85 years of its existence, the UW Press has played an important role as the major scholarly publisher in the Pacific Northwest and has published approximately 3,800 books, of which about 1,400 are currently in print. Today it publishes about 60 new titles each year.
From the beginning, the Press has reflected the University's major academic strengths. Building on those strengths, the Press has achieved recognition as the leading publisher of scholarly books and distinguished works of regional nonfiction in the Pacific Northwest. Titles cover a wide variety of academic fields.
The latest example of Press publishing comes from Solveig Torvik, former reporter, editor and columnist at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Her recently published novel Nikolai's Fortune (University of Washington Press, 2005), is described by Kirkus Reviews as "a brooding, often beautiful tale of life in the Far North and the immigrant experience."
As a child, Solveig Torvik heard stories of a lost, mysterious great-grandfather who left Finland for America to make his fortune, leaving Torvik's great-grandmother and his unborn daughter behind. As a reporter, Torvik determined to discover the fate of the man who followed his dreams to Oregon. She uncovered not only the story of one man, but also the saga of an entire family. In Nikolai's Fortune, a tale of Scandinavian women, the journalist turns fact into fiction and shares the tales of her ancestors as she imagines they would have told them. Blending memoir and historical fiction, grandmother, mother, and daughter each share their own story: Kaisa, of her mother's love for Nikolai and her own 500-mile trek at the age of twelve from impoverished Finland across the snowy mountains of Lapland; Berit, of child slavery and an obsession with seeking out her grandfather's fortune for her mother; and Hannah, the voice of Torvik, of her childhood during the Nazi occupation of Norway and her family's emigration to Idaho. Torvik recaptures a dramatic story nearly lost to memory and inherits something worth more than a fortune in riches: a sense of her family history, her ethnic background, and the generations of remarkable women who came before her.
Torvik will read from and discuss Nikolai's Fortune at Auntie's Bookstore in Spokane on June 7, 2006, at 7:30 pm, and at the Seattle Public Library (Central Library, Washington Mutual Room) on June 24, 2006, at 4:00 pm. Both events will be free and open to the public. For more information, contact Molly Wiznberg at (206) 221-4995 or mlwiz@u.washington.edu.