The Father Who Left the Light On

In 1891, a Swedish father named Lars Olsson watched his seventeen-year-old son, Erik, board a steamer in Gothenburg bound for America. Erik had rejected everything — his father's trade, his father's faith, his father's counsel. He wanted the New World on his own terms. Lars pressed a pocket Bible into Erik's hands at the dock. Erik stuffed it in his bag without a word.…