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Without spoiling this book, I can tell you this: Kristin meets a wood nymph in the woods as a child, and then all hell proceeds to break loose for the rest of her life.

I kept flipping back to the title page to check the copyright date of this book. It seems to have been written almost yesterday, so I found it hard to believe that a historical fiction book with such clear, readable language was written in the 1920's. Once the story started to pick up I flew through it, reading hundreds of pages in a sitting, which is something I haven't done in a long time.

This book is all about the characters. As mentioned in the introduction (which you shouldn't read until you finish the book because it spoils the plot), Undset did a huge amount of research before she finished, and then hid it. This is the way all historical fiction should be written - or even all fiction. Keep the gears behind the drapes.

I didn't find Kristin to be a sympathetic character, which is a good thing. Almost every time I thought she'd go one way, she went the other. Every character is more complex than one would expect, and no one is interchangeable.