PORT TOWNSEND — Novelist Sally Franson will discuss and read from her second novel, “Big in Sweden,” tonight at the Northwest Maritime Center.

“Big in Sweden” is the Port Townsend Library’s 2025 community read, an annual month of events taking place in March.

The reading will take place tonight at 6 p.m. at the Northwest Maritime Center, 431 Water St.

Also, Franson will be on KPTZ’s “Brewocracy Now” show today at 12:30 p.m., with City of Port Townsend’s Community Services Director Melody Sky Weaver.

Yesterday, Franson presented a talk called “The freedom of failure and the disappointment of success,” to students at Port Townsend High School.

“Big in Sweden” follows protagonist Pauline Johannson as she is selected for and travels to Sweden as a cast member in a popular reality TV show.

In 2021, Franson was a cast member on “Allt för Sverige,” known in America as “the Great Swedish Adventure,” on which the fictional show was based.

Sky Weaver was also a cast member on the show’s tenth season.

“We were filming in Gotland, which is this beautiful island off the coast of the east end of Sweden,” Franson said. “We just had this long talk about books and writing and being in someone else’s story, how it felt filming a reality TV show.”

Franson said that writing the book had her researching the history of reality television, exploring the dynamics between cast, crew and production, and exploring political perspectives on what she said is presented as an apolitical show.

“The narrative of this TV show, which is one of the most popular shows in Sweden, is ‘genealogy is amazing and we need to know where we come from and isn’t Sweden great and America is a mess’,” Franson said. “All of that is true, but it’s also like, well genealogy is inherently kind of a racist practice, Sweden has its own issues with race and racism.”

One chapter in the book is devoted to the Sámi people, indigenous to northern Scandinavia, Franson said.

“They’re a nomadic indigenous people that span from Norway, all the way into Russia,” Franson said. “The cultural genocide of the Sámi people is, I think, one of the big blights on Sweden’s history. Though they pride themselves on not being a colonizing nation, they 100 percent colonized the Sámi people, for the purpose of resource extraction, mainly iron and other minerals, lumber as well.”

Franson said that part of the experience of being white in America is that people have lost their heritage.

“If you start claiming heritage, especially Nordic heritage, it can lead very quickly to some sort of alt-right ideologies that I’m not interested in,” she said.

The backbone of the book is delight, Franson said. Franson taught classes about delight at Macalester College, in St. Paul, Minn., she said. Also, she presented a virtual talk on the topic as a part of the Port Townsend Library’s programming previously.

“While making a fun, delightful, humorous book, I wanted to touch on some more complicated ideas and get people thinking,” Franson said. “Obviously, I don’t know how to solve these problems, otherwise I would not be a novelist.”

Being funny and serious go hand in hand for Franson, she said.

Franson said that conversations with Sky Weaver were part of what fueled her interest in writing a book about the experience.

“I don’t want to be a character in someone else’s story,” she said. “I want to write my own story. That totally came out of the conversation I had with Melody.”

Sky Weaver recalled an immediate connection in meeting Franson.

“It’s a total surprise when we get to Denmark and we meet the other castmates,” Sky Weaver said. “Sally and I have the quintessential ‘meet-cute’ between a librarian and an author.”

As Sky Weaver and Franson got to know each other at a picnic table in Sweden, Skyweaver felt an interesting sensation.

“I have this crazy deja vu, that I somehow know her, know something about her, I can’t figure it out,” Sky Weaver said. “Then I go back to my room that night and realise that I had checked out her first novel and it was on my kindle.”

Franson’s first novel “A Lady’s Guide to Selling Out,” was published in 2018.

On Saturday, Sky Weaver spoke at the library about her motivation for being a part of the show and her experience in Sweden.

Sky Weaver’s mother’s side of the family is from Sweden, she said.

“My granddaddy used to tell us stories that we were descended from Swedish royalty or nobility,” she said. “I had always dreamed of going to Sweden, finding out the truth.”

The show is centered around the idea of connecting Swedish Americans with their roots, Sky Weaver said. The show organizes a family reunion for the winner, with all of their living relatives, she added.

“When I applied to be on the show, the producers from Sweden, they flew me out to Hollywood,” Sky Weaver said. “They told me half the people who come on the show think they are descended from royalty or nobility, and family was likely farmers. I said, ‘well great, I just hope they were good people who did good things for other people.’ ”

While on the show, Sky Weaver visited a family farm on her birthday.

“I go inside this dairy barn, above the cows in the hayloft and I open a letter,” Sky Weaver said. “The letter says, ‘dearest Melody, you’re descended from one of the oldest most noble lines in Sweden and your family has done all of these great deeds and many of the men have been knighted.’”

Across the field was a manor that her four times great-grandfather built.

“It was totally wild,” she said.

Sky Weaver said she learned that her three-times great-uncle Steno Hallencreutz was a famous librarian and intellectual. The show producers gave her a book he had written in Latin about ancient Rome.

Sky Weaver was the first contestant off the show, but she did make a connection with a cousin who invited her and her husband to spend Midsommar visiting a small island that had been in the family for 300 years, she said.

The library had checked out more than 500 copies of “Big in Sweden” to the Port Townsend community, not including ebooks and audiobooks, Sky Weaver said. The audiobook is read by actor Meg Ryan, she said.

Though the act of writing is solitary, Franson does it to connect, she said. There are times when it’s clear that a reader has understood something about her, through her writing and that makes her feel seen, she said.

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Reporter Elijah Sussman can be reached by email at elijah.sussman@sequimgazette.com