Donna Salli is Finnish-American, on both sides of a large extended family. She was born and raised in Michigan along the shores of Lake Superior, and like the characters in her novel, A Notion of Pelicans, she has a fascination for the big lake.
Her family also lived, when she was in first grade, with her paternal grandparents on their northern Wisconsin dairy farm. The house had a single water faucet in the kitchen that delivered icy cold water from the well—there was no hot water, no toilet or bath, no central heat. Ironically, in that primitive house, she was given a deep love for the life of the mind and the written word. Every night as her mother tucked Donna and her younger brother into bed, she read poetry and stories to them.
Donna writes in multiple genres—poetry, fiction, drama, and the essay. Her creative work focuses on family, heritage, spirituality, changing gender roles, and other social issues.
For more information about her education, publications, and interests, click here.
Latest Blog Posts
Dear Dad: On Fathers and Daughters
The spiffy young men in the photo above are my father, Oiva, and his brother, Waino. Dad is on the left. It’s not surprising that there’s a dog in the picture with them. Even the dog is beautiful and seems to be posing for the photo. Oiva (pronounced OY-vah) was a dog whisperer—he had invisible charm that every dog could sense. When I’d arrive at Mom and Dad’s with my two Maltese dogs, they would claw at the door to get in and then speed like white lightning right by Grandma in the kitchen to get to Grandpa in the great room. Mom would say, “What am I—chopped liver?” We’d hug, laughing. My pups were astute judges of character. My dear Dad has been gone for twelve years now, and I feel the loss of him every day. Missing him has made me really aware of how people keep walls and borders around themselves.
Mother Love
The photo at the top of this post is of my mother, Rauha, and her older sister, Ingrid. Mom is on the right. The picture was taken at Pikes Peak. My memory is that Mom and Dad were on their honeymoon. They’re all gone now—Mom, Dad, and Ingrid. But “gone” doesn’t mean gone. When I look at this picture, I feel both Mom and Ingrid so strongly, it’s as if they are with me. They were both mothers to me, in different ways. I had many mothers, growing up—my other aunts, my grandmothers, even some of our neighbor women—but I’ve been thinking, lately, about Mom and Ingrid especially. They were in some ways opposites. Watching them, I learned that there are many ways to fill the world with mother love.
The Clock: A Story of Midnight
When my husband Bruce and I got married, his parents gave us a clock with a stained-glass face and a silently swinging pendulum. The clock face is covered with iridescent white flowers. It’s pretty, and it did its job reliably for more than thirty years. But last October, over a period of days, the clock began to act peculiarly. As a writer, I see in the things that happen day-to-day an opportunity for discovering hidden meaning. I couldn’t help but think, What’s up with the clock? And I couldn’t help but wonder—could its odd behavior be a sign? I started trying to figure it out.
A Notion of Pelicans – by Donna Salli
On a windblown bluff above Lake Superior sits a fieldstone church. Founded one hundred years ago after a puzzling encounter with a flock of pelicans left Lavinia with a curious notion, Pelican Church still draws inquisitive souls to its pews with the legend that one solitary bird still circles overhead, watching.
These people have notions of their own — a pastor’s wife wants a honeymoon, a professor has harebrained ideas, a business owner is in everyone’s face, a young actress can do or be anything onstage yet struggles with every real-life decision — and their stories, tucked away for years, unfold and glide onto the pages of Donna Salli’s intimate debut novel.
The people of Pelican Church are oh-so-human and expose their mix of shifting hopes and obsessions, protected infidelities, and notions gone awry as one October day swings from sunup to sundown under the watchful gaze of a single pelican.
