This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger

This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger –464 pages

ARC provided by Atria books in exchange for an honest review

Book Blurb:

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.

My Review: 5 stars

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This Tender Land will land on my Best of All-Time book list, not only the best of 2019. This author is not new to me. Although best known for his Cork O’Connor series, he also authored the best-selling Ordinary Grace, which was a book club favorite in 2013.

I was lucky enough to meet the author at BEA in New York and there he told me that he liked these characters and this story more than those in Ordinary Grace. I would have read this anyway, but his comment made me want to jump right in. I’m so glad I did; I fell in love with these characters like nobody’s business. The kids were each richly developed and grew within themselves and into my heart.

As explained in the blurb and many other reviews, these children are traveling along the Mississippi river to escape the persecution they dealt with at the Lincoln School. These kids created their own family, each taking important roles as caretaker, decision maker, leader and emotional relief. They lived under the stars, created their own path and used the land around them for food and shelter. The symbolic nature of the river is not lost on the reader, nor is the title.

Fans of Where the Crawdads Sing or The Great Alone will adore this beautiful and magnanimous novel. Think of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer that’s been updated a century. You’ll get the same feels and the writing that is just as brilliant. Fortunately, Krueger has another stand-alone novel brewing; it could be a handful of years before it gets to print, but I’m certain it’ll be worth the wait.

Quotes I liked:

Love comes in so many forms, and pain is no different.” 

“Of all that we’re asked to give others in this life, the most difficult to offer may be forgiveness.” 

“Open yourself to every possibility, for there is nothing your heart can imagine that is not so.” 

“We breathe love in and we breathe love out. It’s the essence of our existence, the very air of our souls.” 

“Buck, the heart is a rubber ball. No matter how hard it’s crushed, it bounces back.” 

“When I pray, Odie, I never pray for perfection. I pray for forgiveness, because it’s the one prayer I know will always be answered.” 

“The beauty isn’t in the jewel itself, but in the way the light shines through it.” 

“Second by second our lives are stolen from us. What is past will never come again.”