THIS JUST IN!
Like Water for Weary Souls, the critically acclaimed novel from accomplished author and book coach, Liisa Kovala has been named a Silver Winner in the prestigious 2026 IPPY Book Awards for the Canada-East Fiction category
The police called it an accident. Essi Kivi calls it murder.
April 1933. Two police officers arrive at Rouva Ruusa’s boarding house in Sudbury’s Donovan district, and Essi Kivi already knows what their faces mean before they say a word. Her sister Hanna is dead. Found in Nolin Creek, beneath the railroad bridge, her red scarf barely visible under the snow.
The police call it an accident. Essi knows better. Hanna understood water. She had watched what water could do to someone she loved. She would never have risked that creek in early spring. Never.
But no one in this mining town investigates the drowning of a Finnish domestic worker. Not when the police are corrupt, the employer is powerful, and the grieving sister is just another immigrant nobody expects to find anything.
Essi makes a promise over her sister’s body. She will keep it, whatever it costs. Find out how far one woman’s sisu can carry her in Like Water for Weary Souls, a haunting historical mystery featuring an amateur sleuth fighting institutional indifference and a sisterly bond that survives death itself.
*GLOBAL BOOK AWARD WINNER, WOMEN’S FICTION CATEGORY
*BOOKFEST 2026 AWARD-WINNER, HISTORICAL MYSTERY
About The IPPY Book Awards:
About Liisa Kovala
Liisa Kovala is a Finnish Canadian author, book coach, and podcaster. Like Water for Weary Souls (2025) is her second historical novel. Liisa is the author of Sisu’s Winter War (Latitude 46, 2022) and Surviving Stutthof: My Father’s Memories Behind the Death Gate (Latitude 46, 2017) which was shortlisted for a Northern Lit Award and published in Finland by Docendo (2020). Liisa lives with her husband in Greater Sudbury, Ontario. She is inspired by her Finnish heritage and the northern landscape she calls home. Learn more about Liisa at liisakovalabookcoach.com and visit liisakovalawomenwriting.substack.com.
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