THE END OF DRUM-TIME

THE END OF DRUM-TIME is a richly atmospheric saga that charts the repercussions of a scandalous 19th century love affair between a young Sámi reindeer herder in the Arctic Circle and the daughter of the renegade Lutheran minister whose teachings are upending the Sámi way of life. This is a gorgeous novel that examines a clash between cultures, one that ends in a furious, wonderful "There Will be Blood" like denouement. A bit Lauren Groff meets Maggie Shipstead.

It's 1851 at the edge of the Arctic Circle, and things are changing quickly. The church outpost that Lars Levi, a fervent Lutheran minister, mans, is a rugged, sparsely populated one. The Sámi reindeer herders he's been sent to minister to are skeptical of the Christian values—and strict rules—he preaches, but when Biettar, one of the Sami's most respected herders, has a dramatic awakening on the shortest day of the year, more and more of the Sámi people become ready to let their long-held traditions and beliefs give way to new ones. Biettar's new commitment to Lars and his teachings means that Biettar's son Ivvár is left to tend the family's reindeer herd alone, an increasingly impossible task.

Meanwhile, Lars Levi's daughter Willa has always been the picture of obedience, until a chance encounter with Ivvár leads to an infatuation that gradually becomes something more. When a catastrophic illness threatens the life of her young brother, everything she's ever believed is called into question, making her feel reckless—and free—in a way she's never been before.

Gorgeously written and stunning in scope, THE END OF DRUM-TIME is both a powerful immersion into a forgotten culture and a celebration of a beautiful, ancient way of life. It masterfully weaves together the complex geopolitics and rich tradition of nineteenth century Scandinavia and brings to life a people caught between an old way of life and the new, and asks how what we believe shapes the course of our lives.

Hanna Pylvaeinen is the author of the WE SINNERS, a novel in stories, which received the Whiting Award and the Balcones Fiction Prize. Her work has appeared in Harper's, The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, the Chicago Tribune, and The Wall Street Journal; she is the recipient of fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Princeton University's Lewis Center for the Arts, and the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, as well as residencies from MacDowell, Yaddo, and the Lásságámmi Foundation.


Praise for WE SINNERS:
"We Sinners is remarkably funny for a book about a deeply religious family grappling with loss of faith. . . It's impossible not to like these characters, so beautifully drawn, and so very loving to one another.” —Los Angeles Times

“Captivating . . . The beauty of We Sinners lies in its extraordinary ordinariness.” —Washington Independent Review of Books

“[A] spare, quietly devastating novel.” —The Boston Globe

“In some ways, the Rovaniemi family is like ordinary American families, with sibling rivalries, birth order issues and parental expectations. But the questions about faith--how it binds the family together but also mutates and divides it--elevate it beyond the confines of the traditional domestic novel and into a resonant and magical work of imagination.” —The Chicago Tribune

“A beautiful, understated novel. [Pylvaeinen] tells a sophisticated, precise story about the nature and need for rebellion, set off against our need to belong. We Sinners hums with rare respect for religious outsiders.” —Cleveland Plain Dealer


“Characters who could be painted in grand strokes as villains or angels are small, fragile, and very human. We Sinners brilliantly, unforgettably reconfigures Tolstoy's adage about happy and unhappy families: ‘happy and unhappy, every family is.'” —Publishers Weekly, Galley Talk