Really annoying. There's a lot of good facts in here, and she worked hard to dig them up - Peder Sather was a very private man, and not one to commit his thoughts to paper. But there's parts of three books here - a study of forensic biography, the aforementioned digging up of data; a straightforward biography of an interesting man; and a novelized biography, staying true to the facts but inventing most of the dialog and all of the feelings. And any one of those would have been interesting to read. But a chapter of moaning about how little info there was on Sather, followed by pages of lyrical envisioning of his feelings just before he disembarked in New York for the first time, followed by "and then he lived here, and then he worked there, and..." is hard to read, hard to keep straight, and very hard to admire. She also gets the timelines confused in the straight biography, far too often. And...I don't know if it's the difference between Norwegian history and American, or just that Sveen isn't familiar with the period, but she's surprised and puzzled by things that were matter-of-fact at the time (a middle class or better woman usually married who her family chose for her, for instance). I don't _think_ any of this was caused by the translation, but it also wasn't fixed by the translation. I'm glad I read it, but I'm also very glad I'm finished and I don't intend ever to reread it. I dropped the book in disgust a dozen times, but always picked it up again because I wanted to know the rest. ( )