''Maija''

----------------------------------------------------------------- "Maija" by Tiina Nunnally Fjord Press, $12 paperback -----------------------------------------------------------------

To translate literature successfully, experts say, the translator must be as skilled a writer as the original author. Tiina Nunnally demonstrates the truth of that axiom in her first novel, "Maija."

For some years, Nunnally has rendered Scandinavian literature into English for Seattle's Fjord Press, a small publisher run by her and her husband, Steve Murray. She also won a major award for her translation of Danish writer Peter Hoeg's international bestseller, "Smilla's Sense of Snow."

Now, cutting loose with her own creation, Nunnally has produced a solid first novel filled with compassion and insight. "Maija" is built around the lives of two Finnish sisters, Maija and Leena, who both marry Americans and move to the United States - Maija to Seattle, Leena to Milwaukee.

As the book opens, Maija has just died at 75, and as members of the family mourn her, each remembers an instance in which her calm understanding saved them at a critical point in life. Maija, we learn, gave support during a difficult divorce, eased an estranged child's return to the family, smuggled a draft evader into Canada, offered a warm haven for a pregnancy out of wedlock. Punctuating these stories is the appearance and reappearance of a faded photograph of two girls - a copy of which Maija displays on her wall, but which Leena has always avoided. The photo's recurring presence is left mysterious until the end, when its life-altering significance is revealed.

Nunnally's characters are fully realized, with all their quirks and qualms. Her prose is spare and clean, illuminating her story without ever getting in its way.