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  • This was a great book of historical fiction set in Finland in the early 1900s and New York City during the jazz age of the 1920s. Reading it, I could almost hear the music playing and the men working on the steel girders of the growing skyscrapers. The characters also came to life with their hopes a ... Continue

    This was a great book of historical fiction set in Finland in the early 1900s and New York City during the jazz age of the 1920s. Reading it, I could almost hear the music playing and the men working on the steel girders of the growing skyscrapers. The characters also came to life with their hopes and fears.

    

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• ― krin5292 said on Jul 17, 2007 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

In a tiny village in Finland, Esko Vaananen is at the brink of despair -- he loves a woman he can never have. Suddenly, in the magical light of the aurora borealis, he has a vision of an impossibly tall building rising gracefully from the frozen lake and disappearing into the clouds above him. This pilvenpiirtaja -- "cloud sketcher" or skyscraper -- sparks a lifelong quest for beauty in Esko. He will pursue and protect these two passions -- his vision and his love -- no matter how great the cost, for the rest of his life. It is a journey that leads him into the Bolshevik revolution and the Jazz Age nightclubs of New York City and to strike a Faustian bargain with a ruthless gangster -- all in the pursuit of artistic perfection and impossible, unattainable love.

• buildingsskyscrapersfinlandnew yorkarchitectureartphilosophyfictionhistorical fiction