This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger

August 29, 2019

This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger

The year is 1932.  The Lincoln Indian Training School in Lincoln, Minnesota, is a school where hundreds of Native American children who had been taken away from their families are sent to forget their Native American languages and customs and learn to be “white.”  Children who spoke their own languages were beaten and put into solitary confinement until they learned to conform.  Thelma Brickman is the school superintendent and runs the school strictly for her own gain, stealing money, food, and gifts intended for the students.  She is cruel to all the children, but especially to the two orphaned O’Banion brothers, the only white children in the school.  After an evil groundskeeper at the school is killed, the brothers are forced to flee down the river, along with two of their friends.

I was hesitant at first to read this at first due to the subject matter (child abuse, cruelty to children, mistreatment of Native Americans), but it is so INCREDIBLY good!  It's almost 500 pages long, and I read it in three days.  I could not put it down since I had to find out what happened to Odie and his friends (one of my bad habits is reading when I should be cleaning or paying attention to the dogs).  The characters are all wonderful, even Faria the rat who lives in the school's solitary confinement cell.  Easily one of the best books that I'll read in 2019, and I cried when it ended partly because the whole story is so beautiful, and partly because it was over.  IMHO, much better than Where the Crawdads Sing.

This Tender Land will be published on September 3, 2019.  Go pre-order it from Amazon or get on the hold list at your local library.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an e-ARC in return for a review.