Swedish for Beginners — Susanne O'Leary

When her father dies, Maud learns that her mother, the beautiful Eleonore, whom she had never known, was from Sweden. She travels to Stockholm to meet her Swedish family and discovers both a new country and a mysterious past.

Maud also learns that Lukas, the handsome older man she meets, was deeply in love with Eleonore in his youth. Maud's attraction to him is marred as details of Eleonore's past emerge from family letters.

The story that is revealed, of a rebellious and somewhat immoral young woman, shatters Maud's fantasy of the fairytale princess she had always believed her mother to be.

Only when Maud reads her mother's final letter does she learn the truth about her own parentage, and Lukas.

Set in Stockholm, its beautiful archipelago and Australia