Kirsti
By: Helen Markley Miller.
Publisher: Doubleday
Published: 1964
Place of publication: Garden City, N.Y
Language: eng
Number of pages: 262
Subjects: Finnish Americans -- Juvenile fiction.; Frontier and pioneer life -- Juvenile fiction.
First sentence: Kirsti Junnola gazed from the windows of the lumbering stagecoach at the country that was now to be hers and found all of it good.
Description: Kirsti Junnola is a free-spirited, happy sixteen year old girl looking for a new life in a Idaho valley with her family from Finland. Life is hard when the family travels up from Wyoming to start a home and new life. The new life includes a world with a different dialouge, a forbidden American cowboy, and a suprise cold-shelled stepmother. Kirsti is determined to survive the harsh, long winter with her Finnish sisu, which means having inner courage to lift oneself in hard times. She faces many tough situations, but with her sisu she is able to thaw her stemmother (Mother Tynne) hard barrier and learn the English language. Though Kirsti has strong-will, can she survive what the winter brings while caring for her little sister Impi and pregnant Mother Tynne in this wild, free land called home?
Notes: This book takes place in the late 1890's when coming to America was a major goal for people from many European countries. The wild, untamed land posed many threatens towards a new-coming family. Many hardships took place for the men and women who would learn to be grateful and use whatever little they had. Young love could be found here and conquering differences would take place. It was a country of freedom, but the land did not give its liberties.