The Son Avenger

Name: The Son Avenger
Rating: 4.56 (629 reviews)

by Sigrid Undset Book 4 in the Master of Hestviken series.

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4.6(629)

In old age Olav tries to direct the futures of Eirik and Cecilia, but his judgments repeat the fears and rigidities created by his own past. He rejects a suitable upland match for Cecilia and permits her marriage to the volatile Jorund Rypa, while Eirik’s responsibilities and relationships are disrupted by the resulting conflict. The household fragments as marital unhappiness, sexual wrongdoing, broken agreements and retaliatory violence spread through the next generation.

When Jorund is found stabbed, Olav assumes that Cecilia has committed a secret killing like his own and prepares at last to confess the murder of Teit Hallsson. The real killer is revealed before he can speak, and the shock leaves Olav paralysed and unable to complete the confession he has postponed for decades. The final volume presents vengeance less as a single deliberate act than as an inheritance: Olav’s concealed sin shapes his children’s lives even when they do not know its history, and his death closes the saga without the public resolution he sought.