I was aware of the residential schools Indigenous children were forced into in the US (Reservation Dogs has an episode on this, if you're interested. It's a good show, check it out!) and Canada but I had no idea such a thing was happening to Sámi children in Sweden. This was an incredible learning opportunity and a springboard for me into dive into learning more about this as whole. This took me such a long time to read because every time I read it, I cried. The things these children went through was heartbreaking and I know conditions in such schools were even more brutal than what was depicted in this story. I can't even begin to fathom having my own language and culture ripped away from me and forced and punished into conforming to someone else's idea of how they think I should be. The only negative for me was it took me an awfully long time to remember to who each character from the 50s was as a child and connect them to their adult counterpart in the 80s. I'm grateful for the opportunity to have read this and expand my learning of other Indigenous cultures I was previously unaware of. I know this is a story that was based off the author's own family's experience and I would recommend this all day every day over T.J. Klune's The House in the Cerulean Sea. It's not a "cozy" story, and it will shatter your heart into a million pieces, but you'll get way more out of it.

I thought that Ann-Helén Laestadius did an outstanding job of creating the Sami children and placing them at 7 years of age in a nomad school away from home to learn Swedish. Anna, who was maid, and who helped the children such as Else-Maj and Jon-Ante cope with their housemother Mrs. Rita Olsson. We have other characters such as Marge, Anne-Risten, and Nilsa. Each of the characters are described in either 1952 or in 1985. We see them as either a seven year old or a 40 year old in each case they hold on to their attributes throughout their lives. Ann-Helén takes us through painful periods with Jon-Ante and Mrs. Olsson. And other times with the other characters. But you must read the story to find out what happens in their lives. I can't imagine what's it like to not know another language and being sent away to resolve it. I know that my grandchildren, who live in Austria, were picked on for not knowing German right away, they knew English from my daughter and Bulgarian from their father. It took them till they were teens and taller than everyone else to become well with German.