This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger Published by Simon and Schuster on September 3, 2019
Genres: Fiction / General, Fiction / Historical / General, Fiction / Indigenous, Fiction / Literary
Pages: 464
Format: Audiobook
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INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!
“If you liked Where the Crawdads Sing, you’ll love This Tender Land...This story is as big-hearted as they come.” —Parade
A magnificent novel about four orphans on a life-changing odyssey during the Great Depression, from the bestselling author of Ordinary Grace.
1932, Minnesota—the Lincoln School is a pitiless place where hundreds of Native American children, forcibly separated from their parents, are sent to be educated. It is also home to an orphan named Odie O’Banion, a lively boy whose exploits earn him the superintendent’s wrath. Forced to flee, he and his brother Albert, their best friend Mose, and a brokenhearted little girl named Emmy steal away in a canoe, heading for the mighty Mississippi and a place to call their own.
Over the course of one unforgettable summer, these four orphans will journey into the unknown and cross paths with others who are adrift, from struggling farmers and traveling faith healers to displaced families and lost souls of all kinds. With the feel of a modern classic, This Tender Land is an enthralling, big-hearted epic that shows how the magnificent American landscape connects us all, haunts our dreams, and makes us whole.
I came across this book thanks to the Book Girls Guide. I wasn’t sure about it. I mean, it sounded interesting, but being more literary, I have a history of feeling bogged down in those genres. I checked out some reviews from friends who I respect their opinions and I ran it through Storygraph’s personalized who’s it for just to get a vibe based on my reading history. And then it was readily available on Libby as an audiobook, so I pulled the strings and settled in for a rather long listen (14 hours).
And yes, I did get bogged down. The words, all the words. So. Many. Words. The reason that Storygraph warned me about when it came to whether this book would resonate for me. But in those words I became engaged. Maybe it was the heat, maybe the narrator, but the words crafted something that drew me in, kept me engaged as I didn’t know what was going to happen next, but I found myself listening while I cooked, cleaned up, or just lay on the sofa at night. Did I find all the things this band misfits encountered? Not at all. Did I care? Not at all. I was locked in and engaged. It felt real, even when my brain was trying to correct that perception.
I can’t begin to tell you why I liked this book as much as I did. I mean, anyone can read the book synopsis and understand it’s a book about a band of orphans running from a school that is less school and more labor and abuse. Things that were normal at the time, unfortunately. Anyone can understand that it’s going to be an epic tale of adventures and hardship. But it’s so much more than that for me. I can’t explain it, as I shouldn’t love it as much as I did because all the words. But those words created such a depth for me for these orphans, the people they meet, the adventures and mishaps they encounter, and even the neatly wrapped ending. It’s historical, it’s literary, and it touched my heart in so many ways.
About William Kent Krueger
Raised in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon, William Kent Krueger briefly attended Stanford University—before being kicked out for radical activities. After that, he logged timber, worked construction, tried his hand at freelance journalism, and eventually ended up researching child development at the University of Minnesota. He’s been married for more than fifty years to a marvelous woman who is a retired attorney. He makes his home in St. Paul, a city he dearly loves.
Krueger writes a mystery series set in the north woods of Minnesota. His protagonist is Cork O’Connor, the former sheriff of Tamarack County and a man of mixed heritage—part Irish and part Ojibwe. His work has received a number of awards, including the Minnesota Book Award, the Loft-McKnight Fiction Award, the Anthony Award, the Barry Award, the Dilys Award, Friends of American Writers Prize, and the Founders’ Award at the Tucson Festival of Books. His last thirteen novels were all New York Times bestsellers.
Ordinary Grace, his stand-alone novel published in 2013, received the Edgar Award, given by the Mystery Writers of America in recognition for the best novel published in that year. The companion novel, This Tender Land, was published in September 2019 and spent nearly six months on the New York Times bestseller list. His most recent stand-alone, The River We Remember, published in 2023, was featured on many best-of-the-year lists, as well as receiving an Edgar Award nomination for Best Novel.
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