In 1634 the Dutchman Cornelis Antonissen Van Slyke set out on a perilous journey to New Netherland (present day New York). He was a thirty year old carpenter and mason whose skills were desirable in the new colony. Little did he know that a lifetime of adventure and hardship awaited him. Within a few years after his arrival in the New World he would meet a French-Mohawk woman named Ots-Toch. Together they carved out a life in the wilderness, raising three children who became valued interpreters for the Dutch, British, and Iroquois. This is the story of Cornelis and Ots-Toch, and of Ots-Toch's father Jacques Hertel, interpreter in New France (present day Quebec) to Samuel de Champlain, the Father of Canada. This book also follows the descendants of Cornelis and Ots-Toch to 5 generations.

Professor Flom lays out the establishment of every significant Norwegian settlement in America prior to the revolutionary year 1848. Most of the 19th-century Norwegians were from the districts of Stavanger, Haugesund, Ryfylke, Voss, Upper Telemarken, and West Numedal. Flom then follows the settlers as they begin to dot the countryside of the Midwest, to communities like Fox River and Beaver Creek, Illinois; Koshkonong and Blue Mounds, Wisconsin; and Clayton and Allamakee counties, Iowa. The work boasts of a bibliography and a number of tables that illustrate the distribution of Norwegian-Americans throughout the country.