![]() ![]() He and his brother Linus left their parents and their home in Sweden to travel to America. Hakan Soderstrom is an old man called The Hawk about whom many legends are told when he sits down on a ship bound for Alaska and tells his story. Hernan Diaz, though, has turned this story on its head in his novel, In the Distance, starting with an immigrant determined to get not from the East to California but from California to New York. There are variations on this tale, of course, but most variations do not generally veer too far from this imagined story. ![]() These pioneers built farms, they encountered native peoples under both peaceful and hostile conditions, they panned and mined for the gold of their fever dreams, and they pushed ever forward in the promise of Manifest Destiny. Streams of settlers set out from the East and made their way in covered wagons to the lands further west in search of a better life. ![]() There is a popular narrative about the settling of the American West. ![]()
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