Cambridge Scholars Publishing A Most Extraordinary, Everyday Family Story of Coming to the New World, 1660 – 2016

What is the American Dream, truly? This American social, cultural, and working-class family history, spanning some four centuries, represents a deeply personal quest for an answer from an unlikely source, namely the author´s own European progenitors. Because of their Mormon faith, their stories have been preserved, but not told. What they have to say about the American Dream is noteworthy. For the huge bulk of the author´s immediate family, their American Dream was not the American Dream; their reports and narratives, in principle, stand well outside the fantastic story of liberty and justice for all in the land of the brave. Indeed, their economic fortunes, or lack thereof, did not conform to the pattern; and most failed to go from being the vanquished of Europe to the victorious of America. For their trouble, and largely because of their Mormonism, they were cast in the role of Americas Caliban. Their American Dream may have been only to wake up from what quickly became a nightmare, especially for the scores of women and children who paid the ultimate price. Importantly, A Most Extraordinary, Everyday Family Story of Coming to the New World, 16602016 is a cautionary tale in an auto-ethnographical vein, and suggests that coming to the United States of America was often not worth such sacrifice. Review “Clyde Forsberg has added to his prolific literary portfolio a genealogic tour-de-force that paradigmatically captures the essence of the European Mormon emigration story. Through assiduous research into his family’s multinational origins, he has avoided the usual hagiographic trap by rendering a ruthlessly frank narrative of scoundrels, star-crossed lovers, and a rare saint or two. The result is an account of the Mormon migration in authentic secularity, largely and gratefully free of apologetic mythology. As the various cultural strains interweave through the miasma of polygamy, the reader wonders at the implausible denouement of this brilliant author himself emerging from such wilderness. Simultaneously entertaining and saddening, Forsberg’s volume will be an unforgettable read for both professional and casual historians.”Bill MorainJohn Whitmer Historical Association Journal Editor“Wandering through his extensive ancestral garden, Clyde Forsberg exposes cracks in the myth of America, with Mormon ancestors and relatives who failed to achieve economic, social or even denominational recognition in a land of presumed boundless opportunity. Not a genealogical tale, it is, in fact, a critique of the American Dream, a ground-level exposure of a fable extolled from America’s foundation, today noisily propounded by Donald Trump. Not a rags-to-riches tale, it is one, Clyde Forsberg says, of rags-to rags, how his immigrant ancestors and their prodigious progeny struggled to make their way in a strange land. In giving us this, Forsberg provides arresting views of life in the still back waters of American culture.”Donald Gordon PollockIndependent historian of Mormonism and Canadian history“Clyde R. Forsberg Jr. might be the smartest, most creative scholar now studying the tangled past of the Mormon people, or, as they like to be called in their insular history, the Latter-day Saints. Who cannot admire a jazz musician and distinguished international professor, a tyrant considered dangerous enough to toss into a Turkish jail? A Most Extraordinary, Everyday Family Story of Coming to the New World, 1660-2016 explains his cultural roots through compassionate stories both insightful and fun.”Will BagleyUtah State Historical Society Fellow; The Prairie Dog Press"Clyde R. Forsberg has written an absolutely fascinating story exploring his own multicultural ancestral origin beginning nearly four hundred years ago. The story comes out as an extremely well written and exciting narrative about extraordinary people, most engaged in Mormonism and polygamy, illustrating another kind of American Dream which often did