From the time that Ilmi Marianna Brosi was a young child, language had been the focus of her finding a place in the world. Language - Finnish at home because her parents spoke little else and English in school because nothing else was tolerated - impressed her as the key to success. From her earliest school days, she wrote down and learned the vocabualary of the older students, making their English words her own. But life in Finntown in northern Minnesota had many levels of difficulty with language only a part of what Ilmi had to learn. By her eleventh year, she had dealt with issues of life that often only rested in the realm of adult concerns. - Back cover.