Augusta's Daughter: Life in Nineteenth Century Sweden Paperback - 2012

About the Author Judit Martin, whose ancestors were early English and Scottish immigrants, grew up in Franklin, Michigan. After high school in nearby Birmingham, she attended Beloit College in Beloit, Wisconsin, and in 1961 graduated from Washington State University in Pullman, Washington, with a degree in English and a teaching certificate. She taught for several years before setting out to fulfill her childhood dream of spending two years travelling in Europe. Captivated by the experience, she extended her stay with a job teaching English in a Turkish girls' school in Izmir, Turkey, followed by a job at the American School in London. When she finally came to Sweden in 1969 she fell in love with the countryside, with its remnants of the old peasant culture, and settled there. As a single mother, she raised her two Swedish-born daughters out in the country near the mining village of Zinkgruvan, where she still lives in her slightly primitive old house. For many years she worked as a weather observer for the Swedish weather bureau, going outside every three hours, day and night, to observe and report the weather, a job which left her much free time in which to write. She has had several short stories published in Scottish literary magazines and two documentary books published in Swedish. "Augusta's Daughter" is her first published novel. "Although I have dual citizenship," Judit says, "after over forty years in Sweden, I don't feel like an American, nor am I a Swede. I am just myself, which suits me perfectly."