Searching for Nora

After the Doll’s House

2020 IPPY Award Silver Medalist, Best Fiction, Midwest Region

14th Annual Indie Excellence Awards, Finalist, Regional Fiction

At the end of Ibsen’s play A Doll’s House, Nora Helmer walks away from her family and comfortable life. She’s alone, with little money and few legal rights. Guided by instinct and sustained by her will, Nora embarks on a journey that impoverishes and radicalizes her, then strands her on the Minnesota prairie. She aches for family and acceptance, but struggles to be honest in a hostile world. Meanwhile, young Solvi escapes her family’s bourgeois conformity to unlock the mysteries of her grandfather’s hidden shame and the fate of a lost feminist heroine. Read more…

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“So much more than a sequel, Searching for Nora is a masterful tale… Lyrically told (and) meticulously researched… I couldn’t put it down.”

-Joanne Lipman, author of That’s What She Said: What Men Need to Know (and Women Need to Tell Them) About Working Together, No. 1 bestseller at The Washington Post

All About Nora Helmer

Read about this iconic character, her 1880s world, and her creator Henrik Ibsen.

Check out this latest post from the blog.

Laura Kieler: Ibsen’s Nora
Ever since I first read Henrik Ibsen’s play A Doll’s House, I’ve been fascinated by the character Nora Helmer. There’s something so real and immediate about her, it’s uncanny. She’s beautiful, warm-hearted and charming, but also manipulative and vain. She appears flighty and dithering, then in the next moment she’s secretly solving family problems. She’s …

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Meet Wendy Swallow

Author of Searching for Nora

Wendy Swallow writes about women’s challenges, now and in the tender past. She is the author of Breaking Apart: A Memoir of Divorce and The Triumph of Love over Experience: A Memoir of Remarriage. Swallow became fascinated with Henrik Ibsen’s iconic character Nora Helmer after she left her first husband. Searching for Nora is her first historical novel. Learn more…

WANT TO Talk with Wendy?

Wendy is offering free, online Zoom book talks for anyone who wants to gather a few friends together over wine or tea. Book clubs, women’s groups, writers’ groups, Sons of Norway lodges – all are welcome to schedule a time to discuss Searching for Nora, writing challenges, women’s history, or the Norwegian-American experience. Contact her to learn more!

WENDY RESPONDS TO READER QUESTIONS

Nora’s Journey, a Photo Slideshow