About Florence

Jim Hanson's About Florence is an extraordinary story, about redemption and abandonment, about lives cut short and lives lived to their fullest, and about the things that are told and the things that were not.. Set against the backdrop of Chicago, from the late nineteenth century till now, it tells of a widow's migration from Norway with her three daughters and the family they were able to create. Charming vintage photographs help this narrative poem sketch the lives of these working women who did not count for much in their world, and the lives of their children and grandchildren. It's a journey of discovery that sheds light on how we live today, and how women and immigrants continue to struggle, against all odds, to make a place in America. From the back cover: "To want to tell a story, when the lines of a story aren't even visible. To use what you know about your family to provide something, anything, to flesh it out. To make some lucky discoveries that move the story forward. And then to see your forebears plainly. To grasp who they were, and how they reacted to what happened in their lives. To stand with them, face to face."