In the mid-19th century, in a small rural community in Smaland, southern Sweden, lived a young couple, Christina and Karl Oskar. They eked out a living on a small patch of barren land. Things were hard, people encountered bad weather, harvests dropped sharply, and everything was desolate. The couple's first child died from starvation and stolen food. This famine, combined with the death of her child, made the mother accept her father's decision to immigrate to the United States. They travel together with another family fleeing religious persecution and a man fleeing an evil wife...