Play Book Tag discussion

This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger.

This is an incredibly entertaining epic book about four orphans who escaped from the cruel managers of the Lincoln Indian Training School in northern Minnesota. Native American children were taken from their homes by law and forced to attend distant schools, where they were not allowed to even discuss their culture. Odie and Albert O'Bannon were the only white kids at the school (for reasons we discover much later). Odie and Mose were constantly targeted by the superintendent (they called her the Black Witch) and a particularly violent staff member. After their favorite teacher is killed by a tornado, things get worse for everyone. The boys decide to let her young daughter Emmy come with them to protect her from the cruel superintendent.

The kids escape via the Gilead River, and plan to take the Mississippi to St Louis to the home of Odie and Albert's aunt. Along the way they become a family. They meet many people, and see the great suffering that occurred during the Great Depression. Mose (whose tongue was cut out when he was young) learns more about his Sioux heritage, and is devastated by some of the things he discovers. The boys encounter a traveling group with a faith healer who has an impact on their lives. Family – in whatever form it takes – is a major theme in this book.

The cruelty at the Lincoln school reminded me of another story about a violent school - The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead. I read that Krueger wanted to write a great adventure story like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The main character in the story is named Odie, and I didn't realize until almost the end that his given name was Odysseus. So it appears that the author had another great boat odyssey in mind as he was writing this book. This book also reminded me of another depression era classic The Grapes of Wrath.

I really wanted to get to this one in November but it just didn’t happen. It remains perpetually on my TBR though!

Nice review!

I loved this book too. It has a kind of Midwest magical realism that I also liked in Driftless and Virgil Wander. I think it’s deliberate that the author doesn’t reveal Odie’s full name till near the end, so you didn’t miss it. This could make a good movie, or a terrible one if not done well.

I really loved this one and it will probably land in my top ten for the year!

Yes, it was bit of Huck Fin - and basically a re-telling of The Odyssey. But it was also such a good story that I don't think many people realized either of those things and just got carried away by the story!

I'm glad he didn't mention Odysseus until the end because I might have been distracted looking for connections (which could have been pervy, e.g. Eve = Circe?).

This was my first "favorite" book of 2020. I haven't made my list yet but I'm fairly certain it will be in my 2020 Top Ten.