Elisabeth Fedde, a deaconess from Norway, answered a call in 1883 to come and help sick and indigent Norwegians in Brooklyn. The group that called her expected that she would walk the streets of Brooklyn and minister to those she found in need. They did not know they had called a pioneer with unusual abilities. Before two years were out, she had begun a hospital and motherhouse to train deaconesses. Three years later she established a Deaconess Hospital and Motherhouse in Minneapolis. Her foresight, good humor and sheer grit made it possible for her to found what are now huge medical complexes in Brooklyn, Minneapolis, Chicago. Her story includes the history of the Lutheran Deaconess movement as it began in Germany, Norway and here, along with the struggles of American Lutherans as women began to take more public roles in society. This book tells what she suffered and how she struggled to make her dreams bear fruit.

Gracia Grindal is an Augsburg College graduate, daughter of a Lutheran Free Church pastor, and professor emeritus of rhetoric at Luther Seminary in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Prior to joining the seminary faculty, she was a longtime professor of English at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. Grindal has published over twenty books of poetry, many hymns, and histories of hymnody and Norwegian American women.