Skywalkers
By
Antti Tuuri
Nerveless construction workers are “walking iron” on a New York skyscraper in the early years of the 20th century.
Along with thousands of his countrymen, Jussi Ketola moves from Finland to the United States in 1907. In New York City he joins a group of Finnish men working on the construction of what was at the time the world’s tallest building, the 213 metre Met Life Tower on Madison Avenue. The safety measures for workers are minimal and many accidents happen.
At the beginning of the last century, there were as many as 20,000 people of Finnish origin living in Brooklyn and Harlem. These men are prepared to go anywhere for a chance to earn a living. Even if it means their office is a steel beam more than 200 metres above the street level. Alongside them work fearless Mohawk Native Americans, who are equally comfortable with the dangerous task of “walking iron”.
About the author
Antti Tuuri (b. 1944) graduated in graphic engineering in 1972. He then worked as a technical director, a managing director and a development director for several printing companies. Since 1983 he has devoted himself to writing.The author is very often a portrayer of the middle-class, a behaviourist characterized by a precise style coloured by Ostrobothnian humour. Tuuri uses language precisely, without wasting words, and with great clarity of narrative. He pays a lot of attention to Man as a link in the natural chain, living at nature’s mercy. Tuuri is always seeking new paths and tends to think in ecological terms.Ostrobothnia (Pohjanmaa), the impressive first volume of a series which Tuuri began in the 1980s, won the Nordic Council Literature Prize in 1985. The book describes a province in which people have always had a flare for rising up, marching and even dying for a cause. An epic film based on the novel was filmed in 1988. Ostrobothnia was followed by five other novels, the last of which, The Call of the Plains (Lakeuden kutsu) concluded the series in a remarkable way. For this novel, Antti Tuuri received the prestigious Finlandia Prize in 1997.Tuuri started to write the series My Mother’s Family (Äitini suku) in 2001 with the novel The Sons of Eerik (Eerikinpojat). The series so far consists of nine published novels, including Skywalkers (Taivaanraapijat, 2005) and The Eternal Road (Ikitie, 2011). The author now has around 60 books to his credit: fiction, documentaries, travel stories, biographies, and corporate histories. He is also an eminent writer of radio, TV, and stage plays as well as opera librettos. Many of his books have been adapted for radio, television and film.Tuuri’s interests range widely from travelling and fly-fishing to sailing and tennis.
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