This Tender Land | William Kent Krueger

Have you ever picked up a book from one of those free libraries/book exchanges in someone's front yard, or in my case, my local rec center? I hadn't either, but I happened to be standing with a yoga buddy and she saw This Tender Land and said she had read it and was reading another by Krueger. So I picked it up! I was skeptical, as I often am, about the quality of books by an author who is very prolific. (Anne Tyler is obviously an exception to that emotionI). Krueger has nearly 30 books to his credit, including a 20-book mystery series. But I really liked this story. It's literally an epic tale, an odyssey, of children carrying themselves out into the world during the Great Depression. While faith figures large in the story, I wouldn't consider it to be a religious book. In fact, I googled Krueger to see if he was considered a Christian writer, and he is not. In this book, he had wonderful descriptions of the journey of Odie (short for Odysseus, you'll learn at the end--not a spoiler), his brother Albert, their native American friend Mose and a young girl Emmy from the Lincoln School in Minnesota (Krueger's home) down the Mississippi. Lincoln School is everything horrible you have come to learn about a live-in school for (mostly) Native American children. The children are hunted down by school leaders and sheltered by new friends. The story was really touching and the end was just right. It tied it up but not in an overly precious, "isn't that amazing how it all worked out" kind of way. The book has a great sense of place for Minnesota and the native tribes of the area, and I'm looking forward to checking out more of Krueger's work.