In the Wilderness

It is Norway in the thirteenth-century. Olav Audunsson was once an outlaw; now he is a man of wealth and stature. He is haunted by the memory of crimes for which there are no easy atonement. In the third volume of her medieval epic, Sigrid Undset plunges readers into a world that is at once profoundly alien, yet inhabited by men and women who are easily recognizable. Heartbroken by the death of his wife and estranged from a son who may not be his, Olav leaves Hestviken on a journey of adventure, temptation, and remorse that leads him to a bloody reckoning at the gates of Oslo. In the Wilderness portrays the terrible conflicts of a man who is both sinner and penitent in an age that lies on the cusp of savagery and faith.