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The Betrayer

Kimberley Chambers

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If you can't trust your family...A family at war. A mother who comes out fighting...Maureen Hutton's...

ClareR (6225 KP) rated The Sealwoman's Gift in Books

Apr 29, 2019

The Sealwoman's Gift

Sally Magnusson | 2018 | Fiction & Poetry, History & Politics

8.0

(2 Ratings)

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This is set in 17th century Iceland, and based on the true story of the kidnapping and enslavement of 250 Icelanders in Algiers.
We follow a Pastors family, Olafur and his wife Asta, as they and their family are kidnapped by corsairs and pirates, and sold off separately to their owners. Olafur is sent back to Denmark to seek a ransom, but he fails. So we follow the life of Asta, how she lives and adapts in the house of Cilleby, and how she copes with the loss of her children and husband.
The Icelandic Sagas are Asta’s Means of escape and comfort, and in telling them she gets Cilleby onside and makes her own life more comfortable. She refuses to give up her Lutheran belief, and believes that she will be reunited with her family - at least in death - because of this.
This was such a touching novel, and the narrator (I listened on Audible) really did the story justice.