Title: Kirsti
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?
Subjects: Juvenile fiction, Finnish Americans, Frontier and pioneer life