The Sauna at Twelve-Foot

<p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>In </span><em>The Sauna at Twelve-Foot</em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> Marlene Mattila Stoehr's poetry and prose pieces capture Minnesota following the peak of Finnish immigration into the state with evocative descriptions of the close-knit immigrant community of Sebeka Minnesota. In a landscape of alfalfa fields blueberry woods and corn stubble a parade of neighbors assembles each Saturday evening to take sauna. They gather on the banks of the Red Eye River at the deep spot known simply as Twelve-Foot. In wintertime children race down frozen cow-manure piles on hand-carved wooden skis. A party-line telephone rings to deliver news of a hard loss.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>The collection includes the author's Finnish ancestral emigration stories </span>and is an important <span style=color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>contribution to Minnesota's women's and immigrant history.</span><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> In a desperate search for food during devastating famine a family skied 400 miles along frozen rivers to reach the Arctic Ocean. Other stories tell of emigration from Finnish-speaking communities in Norway to Michigan's Upper Peninsula and attempts to unravel mystery surrounding the death of a great-grandparent in Michigan's 1895 Osceola mine fire.</span></p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p><br></p>