Standing in the churchyard in western Norway where my great-great-grandfather was baptized, reading the family names across the gravestones—Naerem, Sylte, and Knutson — was to me a vivid reminder of the transformation my ancestors undertook all those years ago, hoping that by transitioning from one landscape to another, from the hardscrabble slopes of the Norwegian fjords to the thick black soil of the American prairie, they would transform their destinies.

            And so they did, making a way for themselves, and for those of us who would follow, in a world without abject poverty, without the press of landlords, without the hardship of carving a living out of mountainsides more rock than soil.

            When I came home again, America looked different, transformed.

— From The Power of Place, Deborah R. Huso