Sillanpää's first novel, Life and Sun, appeared in 1916; while it cannot be considered one of his most notable works, although indeed a remarkable first novel, it clearly revealed him as an original and gifted writer of whom greater literary achievements might surely be expected.

Those expectations were more than realized with the appearance of his second novel, Meek Heritage…. [It is a] graphic and compelling novel, which records the author's reactions to Finland's war for independence…. (p. 360)

Obviously, it requires both penetrating insight and sympathetic understanding of the human heart to invest … [the ordinary story of a peasant's involvement in a civil war] with literary greatness; but that is exactly what Sillanpää has succeeded in doing, and this is, of course, the very proof of his genius as a writer. In the hands of a mediocre author such a theme would have become commonplace and have been...