THE PRIVATE GIRL (PRIVATFLICKAN

The first instalment of the Circus Trilogy, inspired by real events.

A respectable bourgeois daughter. An Austrian equestrian artist. When Bertha Lindberg walks away from her carefully arranged future to follow the circus, she sets in motion a family legacy that will span generations. 

Stockholm, 1877. Bertha Lindberg has everything a young woman of her class is expected to desire: security, status, and a respectable marriage waiting for her. But when a celebrated circus arrives in the city, she encounters Baptiste Schreiber, a magnetic Austrian equestrian. Through him she glimpses a world unlike anything she has known, one of danger, performance, and a rare kind of freedom for women. Within days, Bertha walks away from her family, her reputation, and the life laid out for her, choosing instead Baptiste and the circus.

Bertha soon discovers that love is not enough to bridge the gulf between the rigid “private” society she left behind, and the fiercely insular circus dynasties of Europe. Seen as an outsider, Bertha must fight for every scrap of belonging, forced again and again to choose between the safety she abandoned and the precarious life she has embraced.

From Sweden to Denmark, Germany, France, and Russia, The Private Girl follows Bertha through passion, poverty, devastating loss, and ultimately hard‑won triumph. Left to raise her children in a world that devours the weak, she refuses to retreat. Instead, she dares to imagine something unprecedented: a circus of her own. As a female circus director.

Inspired by the author’s family history, this is a timeless story about marginalisation, freedom and sisterhood. The sweeping historical series brings to life the golden age of the circus, and the author’s own extraordinary great‑great‑grandmother who stepped into the ring and rewrote her destiny.

481 pages

Rights

Finland: Otava
Germany: Blanvalet (PRH)
Norway: Gyldendal
Russia: Black Sheep Books (Albus Corvus)
Sweden: Forum

REVIEWS

“Evelyn Scala Schreiber presents a grand tale of circus romance in her debut The Privat Girl.”
M Magazine / SWE

It’s hard to believe this is a debut novel – so well  written and entertaining, and with at magnificent strong and passionate love story.”
Allers / SWE

“A breathtaking love story based on the life of the author’s great-great-grandmother.”
Femina / SWE