Hansen’s Landing is set on a small Puget Sound bay where Norwegian immigrants in the late 1800s settled alongside Native Americans who had lived there for thousands of years and fished the bay. One of the small autonomous villages was home to the Suquamish Indians. Immigrants who came for the abundant timber used the bay for log booms and for transportation on steam ships to

Seattle, located southeast across Puget Sound. The immigrant community was called Paul’s Place by Norwegian settlers. That translated to Paulsbo in Norwegian, but the postmaster misread the spelling and the growing town became Poulsbo. It celebrates its Norwegian heritage to this day.

Local Native Americans had settled into villages established by the federal government. One local village, Suquamish, was and remains a close neighbor of Poulsbo. The Native chief whose Americanized name became Seattle, is buried on the Suquamish reservation.

Ragnar Hansen, one of the four point-of-view characters in this story, is a descendant of an early Norwegian immigrant settled on a finger peninsula in the bay and formed a successful logging company.

Raymond Walkingstick, another point-of-view character in the story, is a Suquamish Indian. They will discover and consider the differing history of their ancestors in this place on the west side of Puget Sound.

Part of the Indian history is the troubling story of Indian children being sent to boarding schools rather than local public schools. The rationale for sending children to such schools, often long distances from their own reservations, was that local tax dollars support public schools and Natives on reservations didn’t contribute to that tax base.

Raymond Walkingstick’s mother had been sent from her home near Poulsbo, on the west side of Puget Sound, to the Tulalip Reservation School north of Everett Washington. Readers should consider the impact of that experience on Raymond’s mother as they read his story within this book.

That school officially closed in 1932

I grew up near Poulsbo with a Norwegian father and a Swedish school-teacher mother. My mother was especially interested in local history. She grew up on waterfront property with a salmonbearing creek and told me stories about Indian families who camped on the creek during the fall salmon run. She started teaching in public schools in the area when Indian children were still being sent to boarding schools. She was one of many local citizens who spoke against that practice and for Native children attending public schools near their reservation homes.

For more information see my website www.janwalker-author.com