Now Available! Silences: A Novel of the 1918 Finnish Civil War

We're thrilled to announce the publication of SILENCES: A NOVEL OF THE 1918 FINNISH CIVIL WAR by Roy Blomstrom.

Set in Finland in 1918, just at the end of World War I, and in Port Arthur, Ontario in the summer of 1955, SILENCES follows Jussi Mantere and his friends through the war and its aftermath.

After the months of fighting in 1918, the price of mending Finland's fractures is silence: to heal and forget, both victor and vanquished, White and Red, are asked not to speak of the war. In Canada, Jussi and other immigrants continue to keep silent. But decades after the war, events set in motion in Finland come to haunt Jussi's family. Jussi must decide whether and how to break his silence about the past and its horrors, and spare his grandson the bitter burden of generations-old resentments.

Available in softcover and ebook formats, SILENCES is available for ordering here.

Snapshot from the Past: Cradle of the Deep

Susan LeCaine, Jeanne LeCaine, Hugh LeCaine

“My earliest actual memory has to do with water and the boat....Lights are shimmering in the water, the reflections of the stars and the moon. I am tired but not cross, just happily drugged with sleep and sun and a long weekend of fishing. I am glad to be almost home, but I look forward to other such trips. The Cradle of the Deep is well named. I lie down again and feel its gentle rocking.”

After retiring from a fifty-year career as a mathematics teacher and researcher, Jeanne LeCaine Agnew (1917-2000) compiled these stories and early photographs of her family’s life in the 1920s and 1930s in Port Arthur (now Thunder Bay), Ontario.

From the summer fishing trips in the Cradle of the Deep in her early childhood to the years spent enjoying the family’s cottage, built by her dad when she was seven, this memoir records her deep connection to Lake Superior’s north shore. Throughout her life, she returned every summer to the cottage, which remains in the Agnew family.

In the photo, Jeanne and her older brother, Hugh, sit in the stern of the Cradle of the Deep as their mother, Sue LeCaine, holds it steady. It was taken along the North Shore of Lake Superior, near Jarvis Bay, south of the eventual location of the family cottage.

We are thrilled that publishing technology makes it possible to share this book and memories--not only with the extended family but with former colleagues, neighbours and friends, and others who love Northwestern Ontario.