Hanna Pylväinen’s debut novel is one such work. The
subject of We Sinners is a family, two parents and nine children. The
Rovaniemis belong to a conservative church—a Lutheran revival movement called
Laestadianism—in modern-day Michigan.
The church forbids dancing, drinking, TV and other common practices in our
culture. But its central belief, repeated several times in the novel, is that
believers are forgiven in Jesus’ blood when they repent.
Pylväinen tells the story from the point of view of the
various members of the family. We witness the struggle of each person with
other family members and with their faith. Some hold onto the faith; others
reject it; some fall somewhere in between.
Pylväinen uses telling details to show these struggles.
For example, Warren, the father, reflects on the family’s constant struggle
with poverty: “It was daily things, it was money, it was when he stopped at a
gas station and the kids all chanted, ‘Get a treat, get a treat,’ and when he
came out with chips they grabbed for them like starving people.”
Tiina, the second oldest child, is the first in the family
to leave the faith, yet “she felt no thrills of liberation.” Her becoming an
unbeliever is like a conversion, yet she can’t quite fill the emptiness. After
she cheats on her boyfriend, she feels “she was no good in both the church’s
world and in the world she had chosen.” For her, “it wasn’t about the sinning
at all, it was what you did about the sinning, and she had no means of
forgiveness about her.”
In spite of how oppressive the church feels to many of the
children, it’s difficult to leave it behind. When Julia, the fourth youngest,
who has left, returns for a visit, she sleeps in a bed with her younger sister
and experiences “the old childhood security of many people asleep in one place,
the uncomplicated comfort of someone in her bed who was not her lover.”
Not everyone leaves. Brita, the oldest, marries a man in
the church and has numerous children (four and counting). Nels, the oldest boy,
goes to college and takes up drinking and going to parties in pursuit of
Bernie, a girl outside the faith. But no matter how often he breaks the rules,
forgiveness is available at church, and eventually he marries a girl in the
church and settles down.
Pylväinen uses irony in this interplay of belief and
unbelief. Nels’ roommate, Clayton, is his conscience as Nels breaks the rules.
But later, Clayton takes up drinking and ends up with Bernie.
Uppu, the youngest, befriends a new student, Jonas Chan, a
shy Asian-American, at her high school. Jonas goes to her church out of
courtesy and discovers a faith different from the one his parents had left.
“Unlike his family’s old church, no one said they loved Jesus, no one was
overemotional, and God was less a personal friend than someone spoken of
quietly, as if in fear of disturbing Him.” As Jonas becomes more and more
interested in the church and then becomes a believer, Uppu can’t stand it and
leaves.
The final chapter goes back to 1847, to Finland, where
we encounter Laestadius, the founder of the church. What became in many ways a
group that imprisons people in its conservative, sometimes harsh ways began as
a revival that liberated people from some harsh cultural practices that were
particularly oppressive to women.
In We Sinners, Pylväinen deftly explores this dance between between oppression
and liberation, between belief and unbelief, and shows the gray areas. These
are not polarities but gradations of human experience. We all move in and out
of various communities and belief systems, searching for love and acceptance.
Often we search for forgiveness. This novel shows that sometimes it’s found in
strange places.
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