the last book I ever read (Eliza Reid's Secrets of the Sprakkar, excerpt five)

from Secrets of the Sprakkar: Iceland's Extraordinary Women and How They Are Changing the World by Eliza Reid:

Heida grew up on this land, the youngest of five sisters, one of whom died when Heida was only three. Her oldest three siblings are her mother’s with her first husband, a man who was killed in an avalanche in 1967. In a small society, with a farm to run, Heida’s mother formed a bond with and ultimately married a man who was around a lot during those challenging years: her late husband’s brother. She had two children, including Heida, with him.

“I always wanted to be a farmer and to work with my hands,” Heida told me duing a short, well-earned break from the labor-intensive work all farming requires as she relaxed in a well-worn La-Z-Boy chair ingeniously placed in the most accessible corner of her kitchen, facing the table where I sat. (Everyone should have a reclining chair in their kitchen, I realized as I watched her. The guest can sip coffee sitting at the table, and the hardworking farmer can relax with her feet up.) “We took on all the jobs because farming is a man’s world and still is, but in our case, there weren’t any,” she told me. “We are basically four sisters who are hard-core feminists and know we can do anything.”