Door to the North: A Saga of 14th Century America
About this ebook
Christian Scandinavia. Dark rumor has reached the king that the colonies
in Greenland have fallen back into pagan ritual, along with an alarming
report that the inhabitants of the Western Settlement have mysteriously
disappeared, with farmsteads and churches left deserted.
Magnus entrusts Paul Knutson with a ship and forty strong men to make
contact with Greenland and to verify the truth of these stories. Among
these men are Olav Sigurdsson—a young man sailing to prove his bravery
to the king and to reclaim his father’s lost honor—and Eirik the
Laplander, deeply loyal to Olav’s family, but a pagan viewed with
suspicion by the other Christian Scandinavians.
Upon
confirming the disappearance of a whole settlement, Paul and his party
follow a sparse trail of clues south across the seas toward
“Vinland”—convinced that some of the colonists may still be alive. As
the valiant band perseveres in the pursuit of answers for its king,
going ever deeper south and westward into an unknown continent, Olav’s
desire for justice for his father finally merges with the desire for
success in their difficult quest.
The Door to the North is
another stirring example of Elizabeth Coatsworth’s authentic and
captivating historical storytelling.
About the author
Elizabeth Coatsworth has been a well-known name in children’s literature for many decades. She was born in 1893 and her first book was published in 1927 just as separate departments for children’s books were being established in American publishing. Her last book for children was published in 1975, eleven years before her death in 1986. In 1931 she won the Newbery Medal for The Cat Who Went to Heaven, a book inspired by her many travels and her “painter’s eye for color and form” that had been so evident in her earlier books of poetry for adults. Her fellow Vassar classmate and the first children’s book editor at Macmillan’s, Louise Seaman Bechtel, wrote, “She took on her journeys a brilliant mind, a flair for the strange and picturesque, a lively interest in all kinds of people. She gradually discovered, in the years that followed, many ways to interpret her emotional and intellectual response to far places, in prose and verse.” (Newbery Medal Books: 1922-1955). Though this Newbery Award title has remained in print, the author became known and loved by many readers more through her succeeding work—including the stories and often-cited poetry in the five volumes about Sally.
