To Twelve-year-old Emma Niemi, life may be hard, but it is basically good. She has finished sixth grade and is nearly a young lady. Her father pushes tram cars full of copper ore in a Calumet and Hecla mine and has saved almost enough money to buy land for a farm. In the summer of 1913, Emma's life, and the lives of everyone in the region, will be changed forever by a violent strike against the mining companies of Houghton and Keweenaw Counties of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. A friend whose father is not on strike will be forbidden to talk to her. Another will die in the terrible Italian Hall Tragedy on Christmas Eve. Only the character trait the Finnish people call "sisu" will help her and others in the region live through this terrible tragedy.

"Living on Sisu took me back to the days growing up on my father's farm. I had always heard stories about the Italian Hall Tragedy, but Deborah's book put me there on the scene. Superbly done." -Dr. Robert O. Nara

"Frontiera is able to take those nameless faces from century-old photos and create for us living people--young people filled with fears and hopes in the wake of events that defined the history of Michigan's Copper Country." -James Kurtii, Editor The Finnish American Reporter

DEBORAH K. FRONTIERA grew up in Lake Linden with some friends whose fathers worked in the Calumet and Hecla stamp mill, others whose Finnish parents and grandparents farmed the Traprock Valley, and a father and grandfather who were in business and mining engineering. She, like her character Emma, found it difficult to "sort out" the multiple sides of the 1913 Strike.

From Modern History Press