Although Laura Goodman Salverson won a Governor General's Award (for fiction) for The Dark Weaver (1937), a Governor General's Award (for nonfiction) for Confessions of an Immigrant's Daughter (1939), and the Ryerson Fiction Award for Immortal Rock (1954), she is probably best known for her first book, The Viking Heart (1923), which gained her recognition as one of Canada's most promising writers. She won international recognition in 1938 when the Institute of Arts and Letters in Paris awarded her its gold medal for literary merit.

Salverson was born in Winnipeg "in its plebian mudhole days," as she put it in an autobiographical sketch for the Ontario Library Review (1930). Her parents, Laurus and Ingiborg Gudsmundotte Goodman, were Icelandic immigrants; the family was poor and moved frequently in search of prosperity. As a child Laura Goodman lived in Manitoba, North Dakota, Minnesota, and Mississippi. She was one of many children born to the Goodmans, most...