by
In Nolin Creek, the water runs deep and the secrets run deeper.
In the harsh landscape of a Depression-era Northern Ontario mining town, Finnish immigrant sisters Hanna and Essi Kivi scrape together a living as domestic workers, sharing a room in a disreputable boarding house owned by a protective madame.
When Hanna's body is discovered in the icy waters of Nolin Creek, the police call it a tragic accident. But Essi knows better. Her sister would never have risked crossing unstable ice—not after they lost their youngest sister Martta to drowning years before.
Haunted by guilt and driven by loyalty, Essi begins to unravel the secrets Hanna kept hidden. As Essi digs deeper into her sister's final days, she discovers that in a town built on desperation and dreams for a better future, everyone has something to hide.
A gripping tale of love, family, sisterhood, and the search for truth.
My dreams of Karelia are buried with me, beneath a thin sheet of ice in a shallow creek. From where my body lies, frost paints the steel girders of the bridge above me, blending its footings with the snow-covered embankment. Dark clouds will soon obscure the slate sky, dotted with stars, and the snow will fall.
It is the kind of Northern Ontario night that envelops one in its complete stillness. The kind of air that transforms one’s breath as it balloons and stretches, spirals, and dissipates. No one will see my body, nearly covered in water so cold I would be numb if I could feel it. My exposed face reveals eyes wide open, and so blue they are almost translucent. They see nothing, yet I see all.
READ MOREWith little will, I rise from the creek that has released my weary soul, from my heavy body, from the water tugging at my clothes. No signs of life within my empty shell, and yet everything is awake to me now. A cacophony surrounds me: creeping growth of frost, cracking of snow, colliding of water and ice, sighing of cold air, shifting of stars, scraping of snowflakes against sky. I am apart from it and yet a part of it all.
A low rumble, a tremor in the air—the night train approaches. The light, a pinprick in the distance, expands toward me until it illuminates the scene below in blinding clarity. The clack and whine of wheels against steel tracks are enough to wake the dead, or so I’ve heard.
A gust awakens the trees, their branches cracking along the shore, and passes through me, threatening to drag me in every direction. I will myself to stay. For how long, I cannot tell. I only know I am tethered to this place, to this one lifeless body, to this one space in time, despite the powerful pull from some force wishing me away. Not yet. Not until.
COLLAPSEKim Fahner, author of The Donoghue Girl wrote:"She knew water. She knew ice.” Essi Kivi is observant and wise beyond her years. Her grief-torn world pulls us in, as she struggles to make sense of the cold hard facts about her sister, Hanna. In this soulful novel about the fateful choices people make during the Great Depression, we meet a young woman braving the odds to heal her family. Liisa Kovala writes with wisdom, heart, and intuition. She knows instinctively what drives justice-seekers, especially when they’re women—what they carry in their bones, what they’ll risk to unearth secrets and bring dark truths to light. And why, sometimes, hearts must break before they can be healed."
"In her second novel, Like Water for Weary Souls, Liisa Kovala weaves the story of a Finnish-Canadian family in Sudbury that is struggling with the obstacles that many new Canadians still face today: the friction between parents and children, the desire for each generation to better itself in terms of career goals, and the search for a place to call home. It’s also the tale of two sisters who struggle to understand one another, but who keep secrets of their own, as well. The resiliency of the characters is embodied in the Finnish word sisu, an idea that conjures the tenacity and strength of not just existing—but thriving—in a new world. Beautifully written and aptly evocative of a specific time and place in Northern Ontario history, Like Water for Weary Souls is a story that will stay with the reader long after the last page is turned."
