Madame Dorthea, a stunning period piece set in eighteenth-century Norway, following the titular lady as her happiness and security are shattered by an unexpected and unforeseeable tragedy. Undset creates vivid tableaus of the social mores and practices of the period, as well as the untamed majesty of her native landscapes, in front of which unfolds an honest representation of the human experience in all its baseness and beauty, in her final novel.
With her, happiness had become an ingrained habit… She now thought she had borne happiness in her heart, sweetly and securely encased in her manifold wifely duties. Not without mortal pain could it be torn out of her being.