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!