The Ring of Lowenskiold: A gold ring. A broken grave. A ghost who will not rest

When General Benedict Lowenskiold of Hedeby dies, he is buried with the

 ring given to him by King Charles XII — the one thing he prized above all

 else. Within months, a peasant couple have broken open the tomb and stolen

 it. What follows is swift and merciless: the family loses everything, is

 driven into the wilderness, and the General begins to walk at night.

 The ring moves through the world leaving ruin behind it — through confession

 and concealment, false accusation and judicial murder. Thirty years on, a

 woman named Marit Ericson, who lost three of her own to the Lowenskiold

 family's thirst for revenge, finds the ring sewn into a dead man's cap. She

 sees her chance. She sews it into the cap of young Adrian Lowenskiold, and

 sends the curse home to Hedeby.

 It falls to Malvina Spaak — a young housekeeper, terrified of ghosts but

 steadier than anyone knows — to untangle what generations of pride and

 cruelty have knotted. She is the only one who understands that the General

 does not want blood. He wants his ring back.

 Selma Lagerlöf — the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature

 (1909) — was at the height of her powers when she wrote this trilogy.

 The Ring of Lowenskiold is the first of three novellas, first published

 in 1925. Set in the forests and estates of Värmland, it moves with the

 assurance of a folk tale and the moral precision of a great novelist.

 This translation renders Lagerlöf's voice — intimate, ironic, and

 unerring — in modern English.