Book
Deep River
Beginning in Russian-controlled Finland in the 1890s, Deep River follows siblings Ilmari, Matti and Aino Koski as political repression and poverty drive them to the Pacific Northwest. In Washington’s logging country, Ilmari builds a farm and church, Matti learns the dangerous trade of old-growth logging, and Aino carries her revolutionary convictions into the Industrial Workers of the World, where she encounters the real labour activist Joe Hill.
Across four decades, the Koski family is tested by industrial accidents, strikes, wartime nationalism, the suppression of radical unions, Prohibition and the Great Depression. Marlantes sets family loyalties against changing ideas of work, faith, class and citizenship, making the history of Finnish immigration and Pacific Northwest labour part of an expansive family saga about endurance and belonging.
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