To Twelve-year-old Emma Niemi, life may be hard, but it is basically good. She has finished sixth grade and is nearly a young lady. Her father pushes tram cars full of copper ore in a Calumet and Hecla mine and has saved almost enough money to buy land for a farm. In the summer of 1913, Emma's life, and the lives of everyone in the region, will be changed forever by a violent strike against the mining companies of Houghton and Keweenaw Counties of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. A friend whose father is not on strike will be forbidden to talk to her. Another will die in the terrible Italian Hall Tragedy on Christmas Eve. Only the character trait the Finnish people call "sisu" will help her and others in the region live through this terrible tragedy. Frontiera is able to take those nameless faces from century-old photos and create for us living people--young people filled with fears and hopes in the wake of events that defined the history of Michigan's Copper Country. James Kurtti, editor, The Finnish American Reporter Deborah Frontiera, who grew up in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, has lived in Houston, TX since 1985, and taught in public schools until 2008. Eric and the Enchanted Leaf: The First Adventure was an Honor book for the Texas State Reading Association s Golden Spur Award in 2005. The second in that series, Eric and the Enchanted Leaf: A Visit with Canis Lupis, won the North Texas Book Festival s children s book award in 2007. These and two other books in the series, are apps for iPad, iTouch, etc. from Pic Pocket Books. In 2010, her middle grade book, Living on Sisu: The 1913 Union Copper Strike Tragedy, won First Place for historical fiction in the Purple Dragonfly Awards. Poems and articles have appeared in a variety of publications. She teaches part time for Writers In The Schools in the greater Houston area.