This Tender Land

By William Kent Krueger,

Book cover of This Tender Land

Book description

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…

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Why read it?

8 authors picked This Tender Land as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

A novel set during The Great Depression might at first seem like a downer. However, this thoughtful, moving, and beautifully told story is definitely worth escaping with.

I love an emotional story, rich in setting, where characters leap from the page to face challenges head on while striving for a better life. This novel, with its socially dreary backdrop, serves to highlight what is truly important in the lives of four children and those they encounter along the way.

Family, acceptance, forgiveness, and perseverance are at the heart of this novel and the reason This Tender Land has stayed with…

The story of 4 vagabonds during the Depression. Abused orphans who take fate into their own hands. Coming of age story during a trying time in America’s history.

Love their story. Well written, and I learned more about the time period, but the human condition and man’s inhumanity to fellow men is the same. Emotional and heartfelt. Highly recommend.

This story also tells of a river journey by four young orphans who in 1932 escape from a horrid Indian training school and travel for months down the Mississippi River. They head into the unknown, unprotected from the perils they encounter.

On my journey, I needed to be constantly vigilant for natural predators like lions, hippos, and crocs. These children had to be on the lookout for human predators: the search party sent looking for them, drifters, grifters, and traveling faith healers. Facing each obstacle we encountered on our trips, we managed not only to survive but actually thrive in…

Let Evening Come

By Yvonne Osborne,

Book cover of Let Evening Come

Yvonne Osborne Author Of Let Evening Come

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

I grew up on a family farm surrounded by larger vegetable and dairy operations that used migrant labor. From an early age, my siblings and I were acquainted with the children of these workers, children whom we shared a school desk with one day and were gone the next. On summer vacations, our parents hauled us around in a station wagon with a popup camper, which they parked in out-of-the-way hayfields and on mountainous plateaus, shunning, much to our chagrin, normal campgrounds, and swimming pools. Thus, I grew up exposed to different cultures and environments. My writing reflects my parents’ curiosity, love of books and travel, and devotion to the natural world. 

Yvonne's book list on immersive coming-of-age fiction with characters struggling to find themselves amidst the isolation and bigotry in Indigenous, rural, and minority communities

What is my book about?

After her mother is killed in a rare Northern Michigan tornado, Sadie Wixom is left with only her father and grandfather to guide her through young adulthood. Miles away in western Saskatchewan, Stefan Montegrand and his Indigenous family are displaced from their land by multinational energy companies. They are taken in temporarily by Sadie’s aunt, a human rights activist who heads a cultural exchange program.

Stefan promptly runs afoul of local authority, but Sadie, intrigued by him and captivated by his story, has grown sympathetic to his cause and complicit in his pushback against prejudiced accusations. Their mutual attraction is stymied when Stefan’s older brother, Joachim, who stayed behind, becomes embroiled in the resistance, and Stefan is compelled to return to Canada. Sadie, concerned for his safety, impulsively follows on a trajectory doomed by cultural misunderstanding and oncoming winter.

Let Evening Come

By Yvonne Osborne,

What is this book about?

After her mother is killed in a rare Northern Michigan tornado, Sadie Wixom is left with only her father and grandfather to guide her through the pitfalls of young adulthood.
Hundreds of miles away in western Saskatchewan, Stefan Montegrand and his Indigenous family are forced off their land by multinational energy companies and flawed treaties. They are taken in temporarily by Sadie's aunt, a human rights activist who heads a cultural exchange program.
Stefan, whose own father died in prison while on a hunger strike, promptly runs afoul of local authority, but Sadie, intrigued by him and captivated by his…


Few books grab me from the first page, but This Tender Land opens with a little boy and his friend the rat, which hooked me from paragraph one.

Set in the Great Depression, this story of found family with a ragtag group of kids is reminiscent of Huck Finn, with longing and acceptance at its heartbeat. The cross-country adventure never lets up and I found myself rooting for little Odie every step of the way. This story stayed with me for a long time. 

The author, well known for his mysteries, used to write daily from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. at the St. Clair Broiler by our first home in St. Paul. In 2019, he penned a gorgeous narrative chronicling three boys and a sweet young girl named Emma and their 1932 odyssey from an Indian training school breakout down the Mississippi River. Krueger drops readers smack-dab into the Great Depression and a magical trek. It reminds me of Amor Towles' Lincoln Highway but was written first.

This American saga is an amazing story of four orphans who escape from an abusive orphanage on an epic odyssey down the Mississippi River in 1932. Their journey through a beautifully described American landscape connects them with others who are displaced and adrift in search of solace and redemption. 

From Robert's list on grand literary historical fiction.

What I love about Young Adult books like these is that we all become children again. We are the young explorer, finding the meaning of life in all its richness. There’s a freedom to believe in something beautiful that is made up of all the experiences along the way.

This is a powerful story set in Depression-era America, about a handful of children who escape an orphanage in the Midwest, riding the rails to find their way to freedom, and discovering much about love and sacrifice along the way. Full of atmosphere and poignancy, it is a triumphant story about the power of friendship and perseverance, set in a world of Hoovervilles and desperation, yet with incredible beauty for America’s heartland. 

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