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Anna loves her large, lively family and farm in the Swedish immigrant community of 1880s Vasa, Minnesota. But when a theological student, Gustaf, catches her eye and then her heart, she enrolls in the college where he is teaching. A romance between a professor and a student comes with its own dilemmas—the first of many they will face. While Gustaf takes a ministerial position in the frontier town of Tacoma, Washington Territory, Anna begins her own teaching career in a one-room schoolhouse in her hometown. Gustaf, suffering bouts of depression, urges Anna to marry and join him. But she loves her work and is tending her gravely ill mother. If Anna says yes to marriage, she will have to reach deeply into her background and character to create a new home far away from all she has known and loved. Drawing on the letters and journals of the main characters and substantiated by additional research,  Anna’s Home places the reader inside richly detailed daily lives of immigrant families whose children face the challenges and promises of 19th Century America.