Life at the Top of the World

'Life at the Top of the World: Growing Up on Sweden's Arctic Circle' highlights the story of Maria Maki Anttila, a Finnish-Swede residing in the northern hamlet of Juoksengi. Born in a sauna overlooking the Tornio River in the late 1800s, Maria learns not only to milk cows and churn butter on her family farm, but also to help with their grief at the passing of her two brothers. Her Mother's Finnish Bible with key verses signaled with a thread, mends hearts with hope and strength both during the prolonged winter nights and summers of the midnight sun. With a yearning to explore new worlds and with few prospects for marriage in her small village, Maria, alone immigrates to Superior, Wisconsin in 1903, grasping but a scant vocabulary of English. She is joined by her best friend, Hulda and, Hulda's two sisters. Together through a series of unlikely twists and turns in search of future husbands, they depart to connect with a community of Finnish settlers in Fort William, Ontario, later to become Thunder Bay.