"A gripping look at the challenges of being a woman in post-WWII Europe."—Historical Novel Society

One hundred letters. Three sisters. One woman's journey across a broken world.

In 1940s Copenhagen, Kirsten Marie Pedersen has learned to want very little. With an alcoholic father, a struggling mother, and German occupation pressing down on every corner of her life, survival is enough. But Kirsten is not built for small lives.

When liberation comes, she secures work as a translator at a US air base in post-war Germany, and for the first time, she glimpses a world beyond what she was born into. Then tragedy strikes, and she is offered something she never expected: a chance to start over in America.

The Scandinavian War Bride is the reimagined story of the author's own grandmother, reconstructed from over 100 real letters discovered in the family archives. Originally published in Denmark, it was selected by more than 80% of the Danish public library system, one of the highest distinctions in Scandinavian contemporary fiction.

This is not a story about the resistance. It is a story about what ordinary women carried when the world stopped watching—and what it costs to cross an ocean looking for belonging.

For listeners of Pam Jenoff, Lisa Wingate, and Kristin Hannah.

"Its roots in lived experience lend it undeniable emotional weight."—The Coffee Pot Book Club

"A literary masterpiece."—Reedsy Discovery