I love the book Ordinary Grace by this author, and I felt pretty confident this one would be just as good. William Kent Krueger did not disappoint in this story of Dickens-esque orphans on a Huck Finn style odyssey down the river to find a home and love and acceptance. Loved it. All the stars.

A book of this high caliber deserves a well-written review and I am concerned that I do not have the ability to write a review to do it justice.

This is the first book by Krueger that I have read but it won't be the last. I have already ordered one of his previous novels, Ordinary Grace, which has gotten great reviews and won the Edgar Award.

The setting is Minnesota in 1932 when all of America was suffering from the heart-breaking Great Depression. The novel is narrated by Odie age 12, who along with his brother, Albert age 16, their friends Emily age 6, and teen-aged Mose who is Native American, are all orphans. They attend and live at the Lincoln School which is poorly run for the education of Native American children. Because of the terrible and abusive conditions at the school, our four main characters set out in a canoe for St. Louis to try and find Odie and Albert's aunt with hopes that she will give them a home.

Their journey is adventurous in many aspects as they are suffering hunger, hot rainy weather, meeting up with good and bad people, and managing to hide from the law. It was so interesting to see these four children grow and mature during their trip while developing a family-type bond. All the characters were well-developed and I especially enjoyed the members of the Christian revival group and how they were written into the story.

I wouldn't call this novel a mystery but it was such a page-turner and made you wonder what was going to happen next. Mr. Krueger did a tremendous amount of research about the Great Depression which he details for us in the Author's note at the end. Highly recommend with 5 Gold Stars!

Thanks to Simon & Schuster, via NetGalley, for an advance e-copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

I'd give This Tender Land more than 5 stars if I could. A mashup of The Odyssey and Huckleberry Finn, the adventure follows 4 orphans who escape The Lincoln School and take to the rivers to try to reach St. Louis and a chance at finding safety and family. Krueger gives slices of Americana during the Depression while also building memorable and lovable characters that will stay with readers for a long time.

I have had Ordinary Grace in my TBR pile for too long. So when I saw This Tender Land on Netgalley I knew I had to try it. And honestly, it is one of the most gorgeous books I've read in a long time! 5 plus stars, a must-read

A historical story about 4 orphans on their journey to find a place to call home. Set during the Great Depression in Minnesota and highlighting the injustices towards Native American children in our history this book is an emotional but fulfilling read. Every character in this book helps establish the time and setting. The story didn't get bogged down with descriptions of the setting it time period but the rich characters made you imagine and feel it. The narrator, Odie , a 13 year old boy is a wonderful story teller, and I imagine the author had a similar voice as a preteen.
I had no idea I was reading a book almost 500 pages. It flew by and I didn't want it to end. In fact, I read the epilogue twice because it was so beautifully written. Also, the authors note helps you see how he researched and experienced the history in the story.
This book is destined to be a classic, and should be included in high school English classes.
So now it's time to finally start reading Ordinary Grace! I'm sure I won't be disappointed.

This 464-page novel is long, but no words are wasted in this incredible journey. The descriptive writing tends to make the reader feel part of the story rather than bog down the pace. And each character manages to come to life.

So many things are woven into this story: The Great Depression, orphans, injustices of Native American children, boarding schools without enough supervision, religion, the meaning of family and friendships, and much more.

On the boys’ journey from Minnesota to St. Louis, where they hope to locate an aunt, they face many challenging and dangerous situations. Some of the challenges are outside of their small group and some within.

While it may remind you of Mark Twain’s books, it has a style of its own that you are sure to fall in love with.

What Concerned Me:
Though I read the book a few weeks ago, I can’t think of one thing that bothered me. Nada. Nothing

What I Liked Best:
The book begins with the main character, Odie O’Banion looking back at his life. He reminisces back to 1932 when he, his older brother, Albert, and their friends, Moses and Emmy embark on a journey. This journey caused me to reflect on history, the lessons learned and those we are still working on.

You can't go wrong with this book if you're a fan of historical fiction.

I thoroughly enjoyed William Kent Krueger’s latest novel. This Tender Land is the story of four orphans on the run after a problem at their home forces them to leave in the night. Along their journey, they are exposed to the effects of the Great Depression, and their resilience and friendships they develop help them to survive. A poignant look into an era that defined an entire generation of Americans

Another winner from William Kent Krueger, and an excellent read it is. I have followed this author for years and do love his books - and this one again is his best. The story of 4 orphans who run away in the summer of 1932 from their abusive school to find wonderful stories and adventures as they travel this country. Thank you Mr. Krueger for another great book for our enjoyment.

William Kent Kruger speaks of writing this book from his heart, of offering the reader his heart, and that is quite evident, in the characters he has created, and the story he recounts of their lives. These are all young people, teenagers and younger, but have already had hard lives that have repeatedly tested their spirits. During these depression years they have either been orphaned and forced into the Lincoln School in Minnesota, or are Native American children who have been taken from their families and sent to the school to learn the ways of the dominant white culture. At the Lincoln School they are underfed, demeaned and threatened; some are also beaten, and some sexually abused. When the four youngsters who are featured here make their escape, it is by river, and they hope to journey all the way to St. Louis. Kruger uses their journey to capture both the time and place; the encounters with a traveling healing evangelist and her troupe, as well as the shantytowns (called Hoovervilles) they pass through on the river add historic detail and authenticity. And the time Kruger himself has spent on these rivers is reflected in his detail to the landscape and the challenges. The author’s extensive research into this period in American history, the Indian boarding schools, the revivalists movement, the young people who were displaced from their families during the depressions, all is incorporated into this cohesive and engaging story. Kruger states that it was a joy to write this story, and it was indeed a joy to read.

My sincere thanks to Netgalley, the author, and Atria Books for the copy I was provided.

Wow! I requested this coming of age novel after I saw many positive reviews by Netgalley members and was not disappointed. It was amazing, reminiscent at times of Dickens and Mark Twain. Odie and his brother Albert are orphans who have nowhere to go; they are sent to an Indian boarding school in Minnesota which is run by a cruel administrator that the kids call "the black witch” because she dresses all in black. She and her evil minions are always pleased to offer a beating, or worse, for even the most minor infractions. After a tornado which kills one of the kind teachers, her little daughter, Odie, Albert, and their friend Mose, who is mute, take off in a canoe down the river to try and find an aunt, who they vaguely remember is in St. Louis. As they meet many people, they often wonder whom to trust—they learn that there’s a finder’s fee for them of $500.00, an amount that, in 1932 in the throes of the Great Depression, would make even a compassionate person think twice. The description of Hoovervilles, lost farms, being hungry and dressing in rags, prohibition and illegal stills--the evocative feeling of 1932 is pitch perfect. The characters are finely drawn in great depth, and the characters’ journey, both physical and spiritual, is compelling—highly recommended.

I first read Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger. The engaging story line and strong characters in that book made me look for others by Krueger. This Tender Land provides readers with an exceptional story. The characters are strong and resourceful. Albert and Odie must endure terrible hardships at Lincoln School along with the other children kept there. Mrs. Brickman, "the Black Witch," rules with an iron fist. She is all smiles and charm as she asks for money from patrons, but she treats the children shamefully. The most horrific thing to me is the abuse the children endure. This Tender Land takes Mose, Albert, Odie, and Emmy on a river trip as they escape Lincoln School. They encounter other unscrupulous people, but they also run into some kind folks too. Their journey in a quest for freedom is well worth reading.

Lucky enough to get an advance copy from Netgalley. boy oh boy am i glad i read this one. what an adventure Odie and his fellow travelers got into. this one has it all, great sense of place and time, and characters that you just cant keep from falling for. covering many genres in this one, WKK has produced an epic adventure......make sure you dont miss this one.

Another exquisitely written book from William Kent Krueger. His writing is epic, and he tenderly creates his characters that draw the reader in and hold them captive until the end.

"Nothing is permanent in this world, not even our troubles." (Charlie Chaplin)

William Kent Krueger sweeps aside the present and takes us to an era in American history in which hope was at a far distance and pain and heartache were daily visitors. It's 1932 and the Great Depression has dug its roots deeply into the American landscape. The Haves had far less and the Have Nots had even less than nothing.

The Lincoln School was set upon the banks of the Gilead River in Fremont County in Minnesota. To the outside world it looked to be a refuge for orphaned and abandoned Native American children. But to those who resided within its walls, it was a pit of abuse, shame, and mistreatment. Run by Thelma and Clive Buckman, the Lincoln School threatened children with severe punishment in the Quiet Room while adults ran amok.

It's here that we meet two brothers, Odie and Albert O'Banion, who were taken there because the county's children's home was full. Mose Washington is a young mute Native American who can never speak of the horror visited upon him as a very young child. Added to the mix is six year old Emmy whose widowed mother dies and she takes to the road with the boys as one of the Vagabonds.

Odie is the breath and the heart of this intriguing story. It is through Odie's eyes and voice that we experience a bold escape in the night. Odie's mischief making finds him almost as a nightly occupant of the Quiet Room in which his only friend is a rat he's named Faria. Faria lives on crumbs tossed in the corner by Odie. Odie's only precious possession is a harmonica tucked in his shirt that he's learned to play with such passion.......passion suppressed by his current surroundings.

I'll let the talented William Kent Krueger take you by the hand as the children escape and take to the river by canoe. Their encounters will reveal the harshness of the times and the cruelty inflicted upon the weak by the strong. The Great Depression was a time of disconnect for some who grabbed what they could at the expense of the others. It was also a period of deep compassion and bonding by those who readily recognized the bitter taste of loss and hopelessness in the souls of their fellow Americans. Odie refers to God as the Tornado God who is deaf to the cries of the suffering. "Life warps you in terrible ways."

This Tender Land is a reminder of days long gone in which folks felt a gripping hold from the rivers and lakes and fields that bind us to this earth. Wherever you stand......wherever you place your feet........there is a connection to those who came before us and to those who have yet to leave their imprint. This Tender Land will leave its mark on you, the reader, for some time to come.

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley for an honest review. My thanks to Simon and Schuster(Atria Books) and to William Kent Krueger for the opportunity.

This Tender Land (September 2019)
By William Kent Kruege
Atria/Simon and Schuster, 464 pages.
★★★★

Did you ever notice how works of fiction riff off of Huckleberry Finn? Aside from the obvious–Huckleberry Finn might be the elusive Great American novel–it's because the tale is part of Western culture's DNA. It goes back to Homer's Odyssey and its parameters probably predate him.

William Kent Kruege acknowledges his debt to Homer and Twain, as well as to Charles Dickens, Sinclair Lewis, and select slices of American history. He set out to write a Huck Finn-like yarn set during the 1930s but as all good writers do, he allowed his characters to take him to other places, hence there's a bit of Steinbeck in the mix as well. On the surface, This Tender Land is like a hybridized fruit grafted onto budwood, but it becomes something richer and more delicious.

Dickens is echoed early in This Tender Land. We enter the Lincoln Indian Training School, located along Minnesota's (fictional) Gilead River. The tyrannical husband/wife team of Clyde and Thelma Brickman run the school, the latter so nasty the children have dubbed her the "Black Witch." In theory Lincoln is a school for Native American children–tens of thousands of whom were ripped from their homes from the late 1800s into the mid-1900s and forced to assimilate to white ways–though orphaned and destitute white children also ended up at Lincoln. Think Dickens' Nicholas Nickleby and you're on the right track. Children are routinely sent to a solitary confinement, deprived of meals, beaten by cruel flunky DiMarco, forced to do hard labor, and some suffer even worse fates. The Black Witch is the bête noire of our narrator, Odie (as in Odysseus!) O'Banion, our 12-year-old narrator with talents for mischief, bad luck, storytelling, and playing the harmonica.

Odie is unlike his 16-year-old brother Albert, a mechanical genius, a crackerjack student, and a perceived goody two-shoes. Were it not for Albert and a kindly German groundskeeper named Herman Volz, Odie and his friend Moses Washington–a full-blooded Sioux whose tongue was cut out when he was very young–would suffer even harsher blows. Push comes to shove when a new Indian boy disappears and a tornado kills sympathetic teacher Cora Frost, thereby making her 6-year-old daughter Emmy an orphan that the Black Witch hopes to discipline and adopt.

The Twain part of the novel begins when Odie, Albert, Moses, and Emmy push a canoe into the Gilead with the vague notion of paddling to where it joins the Minnesota River, then onto its confluence with the Mississippi for a southward journey to St. Louis where, last they heard, the O'Banions' Aunt Julia lived. That's about a thousand miles and it's 1932, the cruelest year of the Great Depression. Although huge numbers of Americans are on the road–which provides some cover for peripatetic orphans–it's still a tall order for four minors. They have some money and papers from a safe, courtesy of some resourceful blackmail on Odie's part, but desperate times also means there are lots of equally desperate people on the road, including the Brickmans and their henchmen who are hell-bent on reclaiming Emmy. Huck and Jim faced all manner of perils as they floated down the Mississippi and so will our intrepid band of four. Like Huck, Odie is resourceful in amoral ways that sometimes make him a saint though he feels himself a bad luck sinner. Also like Huck, our "vagabonds," as Odie dubs them, encounter others with outwardly ambiguous morals: a farmer named Jack; a native man named Forrest; denizens of hobo camps; the Scofield family, who are Minnesota's answer to busted Okies (think Grapes of Wrath); and Aunt Julia. It is to Kruege's credit that he keeps us off balance, which is to say that many of the book's characters are as they appear to be, yet nothing at all as we expected.

Evil stalks the land, hand-in-hand with poverty. Who does one trust, if anyone? Can one linger in St. Paul, where Gertie Hellmann runs the Jewish equivalent of a soup mission? Do you cast your lot with Sister Eve and her traveling evangelism show? Kruege introduces spirituality into the book, but it too is malleable. Odie believes in the Tornado God, an Old Testament wrathful being, but Moses has a Native epiphany when passing through Mankato* and signs his "true" name: Amdacha (Broken in Pieces). Sister Eve is modeled on Aimee Semple McPherson and Sinclair Lewis' Elmer Gantry, but maybe she's neither of these. Emmy has "fits" that may or may not be life-changing visions. Perhaps Kruege is taking us down a vaguely pantheistic path. In Odie's later year recollections he remarks that there is no single road to redemption and compares time and the universe to a river that might be God. River, Wakan Tanka, Jehovah… all the same?

What an enjoyable book! It's the kind that deprives you of sleep because you care so much about its characters that you just need to know what happens to them. It helps that Kruege's prose is eloquent as well as compelling. To introduce a small critique, the book's concluding chapters and postscript feel forced and overly tidy in the way that many rolling end-of-movie codas feel abrupt. Some might also read the book's religious ideals as New Age esotericism. (I'm still musing over that.) But the takeaway point is that in the hands of a skilled writer, The Odyssey is truly a timeless tale.

Rob Weir

* Mankato was the site of the largest single-day execution in American history. Thirty-eight Sioux were hanged on Christmas Day in 1862, allegedly for taking part in the Dakota War Sioux uprising. Many of them likely had no part in the war. The president refused to pardon them. His name was Abraham Lincoln!

Four years ago W K Krueger won awards for Ordinary Grace, in which he brought the 1960's to life. Now, he does the same with the 1930's, and what these two excellent novels share is a 13-year-old protagonist and an exceptional example of great storytelling from a master. Stepping back for the moment from his addictive Cork O'Connor series, Krueger gives presents another great standalone, but all of his books share a respect for the landscape and his characters, and an appreciation for Native Americans and their dignity in the face of broken promises and worthless treaties and grand theft of culture and land. Here we have four orphans against the storm so to speak: narrator Odie, his brother Albert, Mose their friend, and Emmy, a small girl who needs rescuing. Comparisons to Huckleberry Finn are apt since a great deal depends on a water getaway, and Krueger does all of this with his trademark graceful prose. Kudos.

I received this from Netgalley.com for a review.

Odie O’Banion is forced to flee with his brother Albert, their best friend Mose, and a brokenhearted little girl named Emmy from the orphanage. They steal away in a canoe and head for the Mississippi River searching for a place to call their own.

Wow. Incredible. I knew from the first chapter this was going to be 5 star read.

WKK is a master wordsmith and story teller. Absolute Must Read.

5☆

Meet four children who will linger in your memory. Set in a richly realized landscape, THIS TENDER LAND is an enthralling--and different--story from a master storyteller.

Brilliant. I was totally captivated the whole way through. The whole story is beautifully written with interesting characters. I wanted to keep reading.

Thank you to Netgalley for my copy.

I really enjoyed the author’s first book Ordinary Grace and this one was even better.

Many reviewers mentioned that if you like Huckleberry Finn then you will also love this. I can definitely see the connection however if like me you didn’t like Finn don’t be dissuaded by the comparison.

The story takes places in the 1930s during the Great Depression. Odie and his brother are orphans living in a “school” for Indians. On the outside the school seems to have a good reputation, but it’s nothing more than a workhouse for children. Although the majority of children are Indian the language is beaten out of them if they dare to mutter a word.

Mose is a mute Indian boy who has seen more suffering in his short life than most but that does not stop him from seeing joy in the smallest of things. Because Odie and Albert are the only children that can speak sign language the trio become friends.

Little Emmy is the daughter of one of the only decent teachers in the school but when her life gets shattered beyond repair, the lives of all 4 children changes.

This was such a joy to read, I didn’t want the story to end. Yes, the story is full of trials and tribulations, but it has a very uplifting feel to it.

I am writing very short reviews these days but suffice to say if you like historical fiction with an endearing cast of characters then this should definitely be on your list.

I received a copy of this book from netgalley in return for my honest review. This book was so good. The Author had such a beautiful way with their words. It kept my attention and made me want more and more! Thank you so much!