SOURCE: “A Stark Saga of an Icy Island Settlement in the Dark Ages,” in Christian Science Monitor, Vol. 80, No. 196, September 7, 1988, p. 18.

In the following review, Pressley offers reserved praise for Smiley's The Greenlanders.

Few would consider the island of Greenland, with its extensive ice cover, an ideal locale for colonization. Its climate is far from temperate; little of its land is arable. Yet in 985 Eric the Red, doubly outlawed for murder, led an expedition of Norsemen and their families to Greenland for just such a purpose. They built houses and farms, traded with Europe, erected a cathedral, and flourished; and then ceased to flourish.

The Greenlanders is Jane Smiley's stark saga of this settlement in its declining decades. She chronicles the fortunes of three generations in one family and through them illustrates the colony's descent from order and plenty into chaos and lack.

Smiley begins her tale in...