The Dala Horse Daughters is a tale tracing the cost
of secrecy, the shadow of first love, and one woman’s desperate bid for redemption.
In 1970s rural Minnesota, Ronja is determined to raise her daughter,Ulla, far from the con artist life she fled, but the past refuses to let go.
Ulla, hungry for truth and belonging, finds refuge with the town’s outcast, Linnea. That is until Linnea's single act of betrayal shatters their lives and sets tragedy in motion.
Nearly two decades later, Ulla’s daughter questions the weight of an inherited silence when she falls for Linnea’s son.
Now terminally ill and running out of time, Linnea must reckon with the consequences of her actions. Her only hope for atonement is to give Ulla the truth she was denied—a truth bound to a past that Ronja fought to bury–beginning with a long-forgotten object: a Swedish Dala horse.
What Linnea uncovers will bind the two families in ways none of them could have imagined, forcing them to confront whether love can survive betrayal, and whether forgiveness can ever be earned.
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Becca Baisch is the author of The Dala Horse Daughters, her debut women’s fiction novel, available everywhere November 1st, 2026, and a forthcoming series about a 1980s female hockey phenom and the NHL son who inherits both her talent and her unfinished story (Cut to the Heart, The Edge of Us, Hearts on the Line). A proud Minnesota native, she has lived in California, Guadalajara, New York City, and Milwaukee, and now calls Minneapolis home, where she and her partner co-manage life with their four children. When she’s not writing—or drinking far too much coffee—she enjoys the challenge of running year-round in Minnesota weather and paddleboarding the city’s lakes.