Finn Connections: Crossing Borders

One of the perks of publishing a book about the experience of Finnish emigrants (also immigrants) after the Finnish Civil War is finding connections with other descendants.

Recently, author Roy Blomstrom learned of CROSSING BORDERS, a memoir by Toivo Wasko, available at Amazon through this link. You can see his thoughts about the memoir at his website, here. (Spoiler alert: he found the on-the-ground perspective very interesting!)

Toivo's daughter, Lea (Waske) Springer, appears to have been motivated to preserve her father's memoir by the same impulses we are.

CRADLE OF THE DEEP is mostly a family story, but so many readers have shared stories of their own family's experiences "at camp" or during the summer. And Blomstrom wrote SILENCES in part to help him make sense of a conversation he had with his father when he was the age of Jimmy Mantere.

It's really fun to be part of these larger conversations--thank you to readers!

Follow-Up: Veljeni Vartija

Thanks once again to LU Professor Emeritus Raija Warkentin, we've had the chance to see the program from the premiere of Veljani Vartija, an opera by Olli Kortekangas with libretto by Tuomas Parkkinen. Commissioned by the Tampera Opera, the opera is about a brother and sister who end up on opposing sides of the 1918 Finnish Civil War.

Our earlier post about the opera is here.

The printed program is mostly in Finnish, of course, with a helpful list of cast and the opera's events in English as well. The photos of sets are gorgeous and striking. The break between the second and third acts--the Intermission--occurs as the brother points a gun at the sister. What a difficult moment for the characters, who must yet again confront the question, "Am I my brother's keeper?"

It's interesting to see how artists find hopeful moments in brutal events like civil war. The opera ends with new life for which a character is now responsible.

In SILENCES: A NOVEL OF THE 1918 FINNISH CIVIL WAR, adult characters must live knowing of their destructive actions. No matter what other life choices they make, for good or ill, they must eventually choose how they acknowledge the actions of the war to their descendants. In both cases, the next generations make their own choices about war, and about peace.