This Tender Land starts off slow and it took me a while to get into, but it is such a thought-provoking adventure read about a group of children struggling to find their place in the world. They each found challenges, strength, and success. I wanted to protect these children and help guide them, and this book was very powerful in this way.

Thank you for my advanced copy! This was a wonderful read.

This Tender Land was our monthly group read for October in our Traveling Friends Goodreads group. This mesmerizing and absorbing read makes for such a great group read. There is so much to think about and talk about.

This Tender Land swept me away on a thought-provoking adventure along the river with the children here in the story and I lost my heart to them as they searched for their place in the world. I was captivated by the children and their personal journey and adventures. They encounter challenges, threats and kindness from strangers along the way. I loved how with each turn or twist of the river, they learned something about themselves, each other, people and the world around them. In turn, I learned something about myself or saw something different in the world around me.

William Kent Krueger offers up his heart here is this remarkable affecting beautiful story full of hope and possibilities not only for these endearing characters but for us as well.

“In asking you to read This Tender Land, I am, in a way, offering you my heart."

There is some tension here with the danger lurking in every turn. I found myself rooting, fearing for the children and yes, shouting at them at times. I wanted to protect them and was silently teaching them about the ways of the world in my mind but it was them that taught me something. I highly recommend reading this one and as Odie said "Open yourself to every possibility for there is nothing your heart can imagine that is not so"

I received a copy from the publisher on NetGalley.

My blog post
https://twosisterslostinacoulee.com/2019/11/07/this-tender-land-by-william-kent-krueger-wmkentkrueger-simonschusterca-atriabooks

4.5 Stars! Beautifully written and character driven, this is a story that will stick with me for a while! It's 1932 and 4 young orphans escape from a Native Indian boarding school in Minnesota after a series of terrible events, corruption and abuse. They hop in a canoe and travel down river - heading in search for a long lost relative that they haven't seen in years. I loved the people they meet along the way and the adventures that bring them together. I also loved that this takes place in Mankato and the twin cities area - which made it even more appealing to read!

A beautiful story of hope, redemption and finding our own place in the world. Classic William Kent Krueger, one of my favorite authors. For fans of Leif Enger, Kent Haruf, and Elizabeth Strout. Also likely to have big appeal for those looking for a good follow up to Where the Crawdads Sing. Thank you to Netgalley for the advanced reader copy! Highly recommend!

FAVORITE OF 2019!

Krueger’s Ordinary Grace remains one of my favorite reads of all time so I came into this with pretty lofty expectations. My expectations were easily exceeded. These four unassuming vagabonds will pull you into their lives where you’ll never want to leave. My heartstrings will forever be attached to these characters. There are so many beautiful and poignant quotes in this that my highlights look like a novel in themselves. One of my favorites-

“Only God is perfect, Odie. To the rest of us, he gave all kinds of wrinkles and cracks. If we were perfect, the light he shines on us would just bounce right off. But the wrinkles, they catch the light. And the cracks, that’s how the light gets inside us. 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.”

I can not recommend this novel enough.

Beautiful story about the journey of four young friends during the Great Depression. Gut-wrenching and redemptive. Excellent writing.

This was a great read. I’d absolutely recommend it to anyone who enjoys Krueger’s work. The characters were easy to commiserate with and were likable.

The epic story of This Tender Land is full of adventure. I quickly found myself invested in the story. I even caught myself reminiscing about books written back in the day. This Tender Land is a great story with interesting characters who I came to care about. This is a bit of a long book, but I very much enjoyed the engaging story and the vibrant characters.

Wowza! Loved everything about this book. Masterfully written storytelling. Absolutely brilliant! Highly recommend if you haven’t read this one yet.

3.75 stars

It took me a while to get through This Tender Land, but in the end I quite liked it. The story is set in the 1930s, told from the perspective of an old man looking back at a few months when he was 12 years old. When Oddie and his older brother Albert become orphans, they are sent to live in an Indian residential school. The conditions are horrific, and Oddie, Albert and a couple of other kids find a way to escape. The rest of the story focuses on their adventures and their attempts to survive in the harsh world of the Great Depression. They meet a fair balance of people who help and people who want to harm them. The novel has the feel of old fashioned story telling – some adventure and suspense with plenty of heartbreak and good feelings. I enjoyed it, but found it a bit long and a tad sentimental. Many readers enjoyed it far more than I did, so you should read their reviews too. Thanks to Netgalley for an opportunity to read an advance copy.

My favorite thing about reading books is when I connect to the characters. We don't have to be anything alike but I have to care about them or sometimes, hate them, so much that the people seem real and I want to know what happens next in the story and with the characters. I cared about Odie, Albert, Mose and Emmy but also, I cared about so many other characters in this book.

The story takes place during the summer of 1932, right before Odie turns thirteen. He and his sixteen year old brother Albert are the only white children at the Lincoln School, an institution for Native American children, who were forcibly removed from their families, in order to eradicate as much of their culture from them as possible. The school is a horrible place, with the children doing manual labor of all kinds for the benefit of those willing to take advantage of free child labor. Also included in the school experience were beatings, sexual abuse and lock ups in a primitive cell. Odie was a frequent visitor to that cell because he couldn't abide by the harsh ways of the school and spoke up on numerous occasions.

That summer, several things happen that lead to Odie killing a man and the Odie, Albert, Mose and Emmy must go on the run. They plan to find their aunt who lives in St Paul and ask her to take them in but the journey is fraught with danger, hunger, and often a feeling of hopelessness that rivaled their time at the home. The characters make this story for me, that and Odie's story telling, which may or may not be always accurate, as he tells the story in his eighties.

Thank you to Atria books and NetGalley for this ARC.

It would take some effort to be a Minnesotan working in some form of book-related occupation (seller, librarian, reviewer, etc) and not be familiar with William Kent Krueger. He is best known for his Cork O'Connor mystery series ... known for this enough so that it's quite noteworthy when he comes out with a book that isn't part of the series.

I'm not among Krueger's legion of dedicated fans - I've only read a few of the Cork O'Connor books and I've enjoyed them well-enough but I don't wait eagerly for each new book (though I know people who do) - but I do enjoy his work, so I do request his books when I see them available for review.

<em>This Tender Land</em> also takes place in Minnesota, like many of his other books, but it takes place during the Depression era of the 1930's in rural Minnesota. Our narrator is a young orphan, Odie O’Banion, who, along with his brother Albert, lives in a home/school that is meant for Indian children. The caretakers of the home are vile humans who steal the money sent to the children by families, beat the children regularly, and cage them in inhumane conditions for often made-up infractions.

Odie and Albert have had about as much as they can take and when Odie accidentally kills a worker (in self-defense), they decide it is time to run away. They take a number of their fellow children with them and have many strange encounters on their journey as they try to avoid capture.

I had three very strong reactions as I read through this. The first two I believe have been commented on in other reviews of the book by other reviewers: 1) there is a strong sense of this being a Tom Sawyer/Huck Finn-style adventure or retelling; 2) the the sense of this being a retelling of Homer's <em>The Odyssey</em> is not just strong but sometimes hit-over-the-head overt (Odie's name is short for Odysseus); and 3) sometimes this book was so depressing I wasn't sure I wanted to finish it.

Krueger is a powerful writer and he really sucks you into his stories. His characters are painfully real - "painfully" because we experience their fears and anger and trauma right along with them. And given the abysmal conditions our protagonists grow in, we have a lot of trauma to experience.

The story unfolds remarkably well. Again, you expect nothing less from a storyteller like Krueger. And this was a story that, even while I was too often uncomfortable and feeling some anxiety over what was happening, I couldn't help but keep reading.

There were moments when <em>The Odyssey</em> angle was just a little too much for me. It's seems to be in vogue to retell <em>The Odyssey</em> and I'm not sure I need that anymore, though at least Krueger does it well. But when the retelling is so strong that the reader consciously makes the connection, then why not read the original?

This is a powerful story, often uncomfortable, and possibly not for everyone.

Looking for a good book? <em>This Tender Land</em> by William Kent Krueger is a slight departure for Krueger as this literary novel retells The Odyssey story with an orphan boy in the Great Depression as our main protagonist.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

This Tender Land should be a staple in American literature. What an amazing, heartfelt and timely story! It is a moving, engaging, immersive read that caused me to fall in love with each character along the way. The writing is so vivid and the characters so well developed that everything jumps from the page. A five star super star read for me!

This Tender Land begins in Minnesota at the Lincoln School in 1932. Hundreds of Native American children are forcibly separated from their parents and sent to the Lincoln School to be 'reformed'. The school is also home to orphans Odie and Albert O'Banion. The superintendent finds Odie at fault for most any infractions at the school. It isn't long before Odie finds himself forced to flee the school, taking Albert, their best friend Mose and little Emily with them. Their journeys down river as they try to evade law enforcement and the school superintendent, all while headed toward the idea of a home in St. Louis, are rich with a host of colorful characters and experiences.

I cannot stress enough how much I think everyone should run out and pick up this book immediately. I can definitely say that anything else William Kent Krueger writes will be on my must read list.

I received this book courtesy of Atria Books through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I've heard of this author, but never read his work because I'm just not a fan of serial books. He's from neighbouring Minnesota, and is often in the Northwoods of Wisconsin for reading events. The publisher reached out with an ARC of this stand alone book and I relished it. Beautiful writing, it was reminiscent of Huckleberry Finn. This is a coming of age book about four orphans from an abusive orphanage who escape, and with a canoe, roam the American river way. They run into various people, both good and bad, who help them, teach them, support them, heal them, and sometime harm them. This is a book that stands the test of time. At almost 500 pages I was somewhat reluctant to even start it, but it was mesmerizing, and I never even notice. I read it in no time.
Thanks to Atria Books for an ARC.

Oh.my.goodness.⁣
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This book rocked my world y’all. ⁣
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♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️⁣
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The story is lovely, the characters delightful, the writing absolutely magnificent. This book is a masterpiece. I never wanted it to end! The author is a master storyteller with an awe-inspiring ability to leave the reader in love with humanity and in gratitude of this world we get to live in. My heart overflows after finishing This Tender Land. ⁣
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Don’t let the size of this book deter you! I flew through this story, it’s one that is easy to get swept up in. ⁣
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This book landed firmly on my favorite books of all time. All of the stars for this gem! ♥️ ⁣
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Thank you @atriabooks for the advance reader in exchange for my honest review.

A masterpiece of a book by William Kent Krueger. This Tender Land is a story about four young children who escape from a terrible experience within a boarding school where they were suffering abuse and neglect. They travelled down the Mississippi River to St. Louis during the Depression and had various trials and tribulations along the way. None of this would have been easy for them but through family and faith, they persevered. This historical references in this book were for events that are largely ignored in our view of history of the USA and for that reason as well as the phenomenal writing, this book should be on the required reading list for our high school or college aged youth in this country. I received this from NetGalley for a review but loved it so much that when Book of the Month offered it, I opted to receive the final copy as well.
Highly recommend.
#This TenderLand #NetGalley #AtriaBooks

What a beautiful and bittersweet tale this wonderful novel is. It's a true American epic that anyone can find themselves in as the four main characters go on a journey searching for freedom and, in turn, finding themselves. Odie, Albert, Mose, and Emmy are a great cast with each one bringing something unique to the story and I loved them all. Odie is a great narrator, a storyteller himself, and the past tense memoir-esque tone is the perfect voice for this coming-of-age tale. This group of four all grow so much in the story with their own subplots and I enjoyed hearing about their futures in the epilogue. I would've loved to have known them in real life.

At times this novel made me think of Huck Finn or those classic Americana stories we all know but, there's plenty of darkness in the story too as the four kids experience life outside of the school. In their travels they're confronted with alcoholism, violence, cons, and the repercussions of the Great Depression economy and WWI. They meet adults who've been impacted by these things and each new set of characters (Jack, Sister Eve, Maybeth and her family) adds both to the overall story and each of the main four characters' development. And the ending was pure wow! Those last forty pages or so are so surprising and yet everything falls into just the right place in the end.

It flows along like the river itself, this story. Time just slips away as you enjoy it. When I finished reading, I truly felt like I'd been on an amazing, life-changing journey with some new best friends. It was perfect. It's the kind of story that just sits on your heart afterward and you think, "Wow, what a lovely time that was."


Note: I received a free Kindle edition of this book via NetGalley in exchange for the honest review above. I would like to thank NetGalley, the publisher Atria Books, and the author William Kent Krueger for the opportunity to do so.

This Tender Land is a beautiful story, and one that has made it onto my "favorite books: list. I will definitely be purchasing a copy for my bookshelf.

This is a coming of age story, set during The Great Depression, about four orphans who flee their abusive headmistress at The Lincoln School. They take a canoe up the Mississippi River towards St. Louis, and this is the story of their journey and the people they meet along the way, as they discover what friendship, family, and faith means to them.

I loved these characters and their survival story. This is the next perfect novel for anyone who loved The Great Alone and Where the Crawdads Sing.

Thank you to Atria Books via NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book!

Thank you Netgalley for the opportunity to preview this ARC of This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger.

Odie and his brother are residents of a boarding school led by a tyrannical superintendent. But once it becomes clear that they can no longer safely stay there, they take two of their friends and flee, having a myriad of adventures along the way.

This very much smacks of Huck FInn and Where the Crawdads Sing. It's an adventure story, rich with dangers, romance, quirky characters and close calls. The protagonist is full of life and pepper, and is constantly getting himself into trouble. It's delightful and colorfully written.

However, surprisingly, it grew tired for me quickly. The make-shift "family" just seemed to hop around from one situation to more of the same. It took so long to get where they were going that I lost interest in the journey, something that I'm ashamed to admit because I usually love the journey. Perhaps I just didn't read this at the right time.

Beautifully written. I loved everything....the characters, the setting, the story...the journey.
One of the best books I've read this year. I can't wait to read and discuss it with my book club.