“Lying on my blanket beside Albert, I was happy to have him for a brother, though I had no intention of telling him so. I didn’t always understand him, and I knew that, more often than not, I was a bafflement to him as well, but the heart isn’t the logical organ of the body, and I loved my brother deeply and fell asleep in the warmth of his company.”

This Tender Land is the third stand-alone novel by award-winning, best-selling American author, William Kent Krueger. It’s 1932, and twelve-year-old Odie O’Banion, his older brother, Albert, his Sioux friend, Moses Washington and Little Emmy Frost are paddling a canoe down the Gilead River, heading towards the Mississippi. They’re on the run from the police, wanted for theft, kidnapping and murder.

The managers of their erstwhile “home”, the Lincoln Indian Training School, are also on their trail, and that’s a place they never want to see again, so they are doing their best to keep a low profile. Eventually they settle on St Louis as their destination, knowing it will take some time from Minnesota.

Why they are in flight, what and whom they encounter on the journey, and what happens at its end, is what fills this superb coming-of-age/adventure tale. They endure forced labour and corporal punishment, captivity and several narrow escapes. A still is built, a man is shot, a tornado devastates, a snake-bite is suffered, and Krueger demonstrates that dumpster-diving is no new phenomenon.

Group members join a Christian healing crusade, visit shanty towns, work in a restaurant, hop a freight train, and are on the receiving end of both the heartlessness and the kindness of strangers. Their experiences alter their beliefs in God, and teach them about love, trust, charity and loyalty.

“I did want to believe that God was my shepherd and that somehow he was leading me through this dark valley of Lincoln School and I shouldn’t be afraid… But the truth I saw every day was that we were on our own and our safety depended not on God but on ourselves and on helping one another.”

Krueger takes the reader to a time in the not-too-distant past when children had virtually no rights, especially if, as in this case, they were orphans or Native American children forcibly removed from their parents. While there were, of course, many genuinely good people amongst those in a guardianship role, a significant number of these children were at the mercy of unscrupulous adults who revelled in cruelty and to whom kindness was a foreign concept.

Krueger gives the reader a relatable cast of characters who are humanly flawed, neither wholly good nor evil, and endows some with insightful observations and wise words: “Albert, who was four years older and a whole lot wiser, told me that people are most afraid of things they don’t understand, and if something frightened you, you should get closer to it. That didn’t mean it wouldn’t still be an awful thing, but the awful you knew was easier to handle than the awful you imagined.” Subtly filled with fascinating historical detail, this is a wonderfully uplifting read.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Simon & Schuster Australia.

This is the first of this author's works I have read, but it won't be the last.
A gripping narrative set in the American Midwest during the Great Depression, it is filled with interesting and sometimes challenging characters.

THIS TENDER LAND is the type of story I would have loved to listen to as a child. Set in the 1930’s, the era of the Great Depression, the book focuses on the adventures of four orphans who are on the run from an evil headmistress, using a canoe on a tributary of the mighty Mississippi river to evade the authorities. It evoked memories of my Dad reading us stories of the adventures of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer as we listened, wide-eyed and spellbound, with a foreign wonderland of wild river country and colourful characters taking shape in our minds.

Sometimes you know within a few pages that you are going to love a book. As soon as I met Odie O’Banion, the narrator of the story, as he recalls memories of his 12-year old self growing up in Lincoln School for Native American children with his brother Albert and best friend Mose, I knew I was in for a real treat. My heart broke for Odie and his schoolmates as the full horror of life at this institution was revealed, and I cheered for them as they made their getaway. From here on, a wonderful adventure unfolded, brimming with a rich cast of interesting and well-rounded characters that made the story roll out like a movie in my mind. My inner child was full of awe for the four adventurers, whilst my maternal side just wanted to grab them, hug them and give them a good hot meal and a warm bed to sleep in. The author brings the era of the Great Depression to life, with all its hardships but also the generosity and camaraderie that helped people survive. With the wonderfully atmospheric setting of the (fictional) Gilead River and the mighty Mississippi, the stage was set and I was transported into another world I would only emerge from reluctantly, hours later, still dazed from the different world I had just experienced.

THIS TENDER LAND really was the best type of book, one that took me out of my own reality and made me live another life, during another time, as seen through Odie’s eyes. I just loved those four “vagabonds”! I laughed, I cried, I raged and cheered – all the emotions! It’s a book that will appeal to a wide audience, from teenagers to the old – all you need is a sense of adventure and a bit of compassion for the wonderful people you will encounter on the journey. I didn’t want the story to end, and the characters are still very much alive in my mind. This is perhaps why I would have preferred a more open ending than the older Odie looking back at his childhood and the years that followed, but it’s still one that will go onto my favourites list this year. I really loved the author’s writing style and can’t wait to read my way through his other books.

This is the second book I have read by this author, the other being "Ordinary Grace' which was also very good. Kreuger is an author in whose hands you feel very safe. His writing is very lyrical and beautiful, and he proves to be a gentle guide through some very tough situations.
In this story Odie (short for Odysseus) is an orphan who along with his brother Albert is living in harsh conditions in an orphanage established for American Indians. Life in the orphanage is brutal, and Odie and Albert leave after some events force them to flee. With them is Mose, a mute Indian teenager and Emmy a little girl grieving her recently deceased parents.
The setting is America during the Great Depression in 1932. Life is hard everywhere but on this journey Odie realises that there is evil in the world, but also opportunity to witness acts that are good and kind. In a Huckleberry Finn type adventure down a river the foursome meet many characters and each comes with a lesson in humankind.
I can highly recommend this book and author. Thank you Simon & Schuster Australia, Atria Books and Netgalley for the opportunity to review digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.