What I’m Reading: This Tender Land

I am adding another book review in this week.  I usually only do one a week but if you are looking for a Christmas present for an avid reader, this book might be just what need.

A bit ago I wrote a blog post about books that I really recommend.  Well, I found another to add to the list, This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger.  In my other listing I had recommended a book Ordinary Grace.  This book is by the same author.  I highly recommend these both.

These books have been especially interesting to me.  This one takes place in 1932 after the Great Depression.  The book takes place in my old stomping ground.  It happens along a river in a county with a name really similar to Freeborn County.  That was the neighboring county to me growing up.

Kids in the book run away..and they run to Mankato, Minnesota.  I went to college in Mankato.

What’s even more special to me is that my Mom grew up around Mankato.  In 1932, she would have been 4.  A girl in the book is 6 at the time.  I couldn’t help but make connections.

But more than all my personal connections, this was plain out, a good book.

Here’s what Amazon had to say:“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.”

Amazon readers give the book 4.7 stars. That rating came from over 400 people.  That means something to me.  I’d give the book 5 stars.  I really loved it.  If you read my book reviews regularly, you know I rarely give 5 stars.

If you are looking for this book, you can find it HERE.  The link for his other book that I love, Ordinary Grace, is HERE.