Hilda

About the Book

In 1881 Carl and Gunilla Swensson traveled from Malmo, Sweden to America in search of a better life for themselves and their three children. Hilda, the youngest daughter, was three years old at the time. The Swenssons, whose name was changed to Swanson at Ellis Island, settled in Northeast Minneapolis where they opened a boarding house on Harrison Street. Hilda – the Biography of an Old-Fashioned Girl in an Old-Fashioned World, is a tribute to Hilda Johnson’s life written by her daughter, Semona Whitney. The story reads like a novel. Historical and suitable for adults and children alike, it is a vivid portrait of life's chances, losses, and triumphs in another era. Disabled in early childhood by rickets, Hilda cannot run and play outside with the other children. But when a music teacher gives "stahkars litten Hilda" ("poor little Hilda") piano lessons in exchange for a room at the Swanson boarding house, Hilda's adventures begin. Her music takes her as a young adult across the frozen Midwest with Alexander Bull, son of the famous Norwegian violinist, Ole Bull, and back to the drawing rooms of the Minneapolis elite. Hilda struggles between her love for music and her longing for family, between independence and duty, finding at last her true love. A remarkable woman, Hilda viewed life with humor and lived it with passion. This book is her story.

About the Author

Semona Whitney loved to read as a school girl and especially liked English and Shakespearean classes. She began writing poems and essays at an early age and has continued her love of writing to this day, attending YWCA and Readers Digest and COMPASS writing programs. Semona was a feature staff writer in the 1950s for the East Minneapolis Argus, has been published in two Macfadden Women’s Group magazines, and also in the Saint Paul Press. Her newspaper experience and her published essays encouraged her to write about her mother’s life – something she knew all about from her mother’s diary and from newspaper clippings of that era. Semona wrote Hilda in the early 1980s after a trip to Sweden where she was welcomed by extended family on her father’s side. Today, Semona Whitney is eighty-seven years old and lives in Northeast Minneapolis in a high-rise apartment building overlooking 1010 18^th Avenue, her parents’ last home.