Selma Lagerlof was the first woman and the first Swedish author to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1909. JERUSALEM was written following her trip to Egypt and Palestine in the winter of 1900; the book was inspired by an actual historic event -- a religious pilgrimage of 25 adults and children from Chicago. "JERUSALEM begins with the history of a wealthy and powerful farmer family, the Ingmarssons of Ingmar Farm, and develops to include the whole parish life with its varied farmer types, its pastor, schoolmaster, shopkeeper, and innkeeper. The romance portrays the religious revival introduced by a practical mystic from Chicago which leads many families to sell their ancestral homesteads and--in the last chapter of this volume--to emigrate in a body to the Holy Land." (From the introduction by Henry Goddard Leach.)