Living at borderlands you get used to wars, but for love there are no boundaries
Author: Merja Mäki
Finnish original: Itki toisenkin
Publisher: Gummerus, 2024
Genre: upmarket fiction
Number of pages: 415 pp
Reading material: Finnish original, English sample, English synopsis
Rights sold: Sweden, Historiska Media
It is the summer of 1942 and Larja returns to her home to Aunus Karelia from teacher training camp. Peace has momentarily descended on this bit of territory recently reclaimed from the Soviets by Finnish troops. Upon her arrival, Larja soon learns that her buabo Matja, the village’s most-respected professional lamenter, is deathly ill, and her little sister Pola carries a secret deep within her heart. Their mother’s wild rose bushes bloom near the step and yet the fate of her parents, carted off to a gulag years ago, remains unknown. As Larja cares for her ailing grandmother, she listens to the messages the trees are sending her on the northern winds and discovers that she too has the gift of wailing. However, it requires great courage to accompany the dead to the other side. After a Finnish man steps into her life, Larja finds herself again torn between two different worlds. Still, love knows no borders and the winds blow as they see fit. Can Larja answer the wind’s call and weep another day? Wept Another is the story of a young woman who has grown up between two cultures on the border of two countries. It is a tale of roots and the ties that bind us, but above all, of the choices that you must make in life.
About the author:
Merja Mäki