Until We Reach Home by Lynn Austin

-->This book won the 2009 Christy Award for historical fiction. The entire list is here.

I am a fan of Lynn Austin, and I have read all of her books, some of them twice. See her other work on her site here. This one got off to a slow start. Maybe it was because I was reading it in the large-print edition. However, after a couple of chapters, I really got involved in the story of the three orphaned Swedish sisters on their journey to a new life in America.

Austin is a history teacher, so she really gets into the details of life in whatever time period she chooses for her stories. The girls travel on a ship from Sweden to Chicago and encounter plenty of problems on the way. In a way, it’s a coming of age story, because each girl grows mentally and spiritually by the end of the story. Each also finds a love interest, so I guess it’s technically a historical romance.

It’s a great read, and an award winner. What more could you want.