Art Notes: New novel follows Cold War romance between NH man and Finnish woman

The first time Ford von Reyn visited Finland, before he’d even disembarked the plane, he felt an affinity for the country.

The Finnish classical music playing over the speakers at touchdown stirred something in him. Later he’d hear locals speaking Finnish on the streets of Helsinki and become enamored with the language’s complexity – its subtleties of pronunciation and the long list of noun cases.

That trip was in 1984, when von Reyn, a physician and professor emeritus of medicine who specializes in infectious diseases, journeyed to Finland with International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, a nonpartisan federation of doctors. The group won the Nobel Peace Prize the following year for its research and anti-war efforts.

Decades later, von Reyn, a Thetford resident who retired as a researcher at the Geisel School of Medicine last November, has never lost his love for Finland and its language.

“I’m a great advocate for Finland. I’m a real Fennophile,” von Reyn said in a recent interview in Hanover.

That adoration comes through in von Reyn’s debut novel “Love from Afar: Finland,” in which a New Hampshire ski salesman shares a decades-long correspondence with a Finnish woman he meets while participating in a Quaker peace delegation in Helsinki during the Cold War.

Writing the novel marked a return to creative writing for von Reyn, a practice that he began as an English major at Dartmouth College, but set aside to focus on medicine.

Being a doctor came with plenty of writing of its own – mainly in the form of textbook chapters and research papers, but creative writing has given von Reyn full rein of his imagination.

“You can take the characters wherever you want, and they sort of develop their own life,” he said.

Several years ago he wrote a couple of short pieces that appeared in the pages of the Valley News, including one about what makes Finland the world’s happiest country (universal health care and a strong education system play a part) before setting to work on “Love from Afar.”

Among von Reyn’s favorite books are those that reflect on the long arc of a person’s life – Charles Dickens’ novels; Larry McMurtry’s “Lonesome Dove.” “Love from Afar” follows in that tradition.

The novel opens in a hospital room, where a sick and aging Frank casts back to his time in Finland and Russia during those Cold War years as his granddaughter, a medical student at Harvard, where von Reyn also studied, keeps him company.

Now 80, von Reyn also has his own lifetime of experiences to draw from: his time treating AIDS patients in Africa, developing a tuberculosis vaccine and spending six months in Finland with his family in 1990, for example.

“I wouldn’t have had much to write about when I was 18,” he said.

Writing “Love from Afar” took von Reyn four years. To give the process some structure, he participated in weekly workshops at the Writer’s Center of White River Junction. The regular page deadlines and feedback sessions helped buoy the project along, he said.

Finishing the novel has set von Reyn on a roll, and he’s since begun a historical fiction book about his grandmother, with whom he shared a close bond. A high school principal in the 1920s and ’30s, which was unusual for a woman at the time, she was the first person to show him a book in a foreign language or play him a record on a record player.

In October, von Reyn will return to Finland for the Helsinki Book Fair. “Love from Afar” is getting a Finnish translation and though he won’t be able to attest to its quality as a nonfluent speaker, there’s satisfaction in just knowing the book is out there.

Deep down, von Reyn always imagined the novel’s reader as Finnish.

Ford von Reyn’s debut novel “Love from Afar: Finland” can be purchased at Upper Valley bookstores and online.

Folklore opera

The Pandora Consort, an early music ensemble dedicated to performing the work of historically marginalized composers, will bring “The Fire Within Her: An American Folktale About Women’s Liberation” to Chandler Center for the Arts at 7 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 19. A folk opera, “The Fire Within Her” intertwines the stories of revolutionary women across history from Susan B. Anthony to Betty Friedan through Shaker hymns, protest songs and more. To buy tickets (suggested donation of $25) go to chandler-arts.org.

Ghosts in town

Parish Players’ production of “Ghosts,” Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen’s tale of a bourgeois family’s reckoning with their dark past, is up through Sept. 20 at the Eclipse Grange Theatre in Thetford. For tickets ($25; $15 for students; $20 for seniors) and more information, go to parishplayers.org.

Dreamland

“A Place Visited Only in Dreams,” a new group exhibition at AVA Gallery and Art Center in Lebanon, is on view through Nov. 14. The free exhibition includes more than 30 artists whose work explores the subconscious and alternate realities. A reception for the show is slated for 5 to 7 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 25. Learn more at avagallery.org.

Print party

A celebration of Two Rivers Printmaking Studio’s expansion into a neighboring space in the Tip Top Media and Arts Building in White River Junction is set for 5 to 8 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 26. The expansion, which comes after 25 years in a 1,000-square-foot workspace, will make it possible for the studio to increase its membership numbers and printmaking methods. Learn more about the upcoming celebration at tworiversprintmaking.org.