This Tender Land

Product Information

This Tender Land is a heartfelt, true to life Depression-era story filled with courage, determination, and heroism. In a letter to readers, author William Kent Krueger talks about his own difficult journey while writing this book.

This Tender Land is a moving portrait of a time and place receding from the collective memory, but leaving its mark on the heart of what the nation has become.” Sister Eve says to Odie that the only prayer she knows will absolutely be answered is a prayer for forgiveness. What do you think she means by this? Who are the people whom Odie needs to forgive, and for what reasons? William Kent Kruger’s This Tender Land is an epic adventure, a story that takes us on a journey through one boy’s Depression-blighted summer of 1932. Fans of historical fiction will love this well-researched tale.” I read because books are a form of transportation, of teaching, and of connection! Books take us to places we’ve never been, they teach us about our world, and they help us to understand human experience.” If you liked Where the Crawdads Sing, you’ll love This Tender Land by best-selling author William Kent Krueger. The story is as big-hearted as they come”

William Kent Krueger

She put her hands on her desk, one atop the other, and spread her fingers wide so that they formed a kind of web over the polished wood. She smiled at me as if she were a spider who’d just snagged a fly. “Good,” she said. “Good.” She nodded toward Albert. “You should be more like your brother.” In the beginning, after he labored over the heavens and the earth, the light and the dark, the land and sea and all living things that dwell therein, after he created man and woman and before he rested, I believe God gave us one final gift. Lest we forget the divine source of all that beauty, he gave us stories.

Fleeing further down-river, the boys learn from news articles they are being accused of kidnapping Emmy and may be executed. Drawn by beautiful music and food, the children join a revival meeting of the Gideon Crusade, a snake-handling church led by Sister Eve, who performs faith healings. After Odie catches camp manager Sid paying off the recipients of "miraculous" healings, he confronts Sister Eve about her frauds. This startles Emmy, who accidentally releases rattlesnake Lucifer, who poisons Albert. As they wait for antivenom to arrive, Sister Eve explains that she had cured the actors once and let Sid convince her to hire them to "prime the pump" in new towns. The antivenom arrives just in time, but the story's publicity forces the children to flee again. Krueger takes the reader to a time in the not-too-distant past when children had virtually no rights, especially if, as in this case, they were orphans or Native American children forcibly removed from their parents. While there were, of course, many genuinely good people amongst those in a guardianship role, a significant number of these children were at the mercy of unscrupulous adults who revelled in cruelty and to whom kindness was a foreign concept. A book you won’t own. It will own you. Long, sprawling, and utterly captivating, readers will eat up every delicious word of it.”

Lesson Plan

After DiMarco died, Odie was glad. What did you think of Odie then? Did you think he would be forever affected by it? Pig scarer takes them to a room in the barn where they are held captive and forced to work the farm. 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. At first, Odie views God as a powerful, destructive force, akin to a tornado that can destroy everything. This belief provides an outlet for his anger, but it also feeds into additional anger and cynicism. However, after encountering the Sword of Gideon Healing Crusade, Odie begins to reconsider his views. Recommended: This Tender Land is recommended for readers who appreciate a well-written, poignant, and lyrical story by a master storyteller, for fans of William Kent Krueger ( Ordinary Grace), for those who love historical fiction and adventure stories, and definitely for book clubs.

This book woke up my anger against unfairness, my unconditional love to the all children, my concerns about never ending fight for the justice, equality and changing the system to create a better world. Their hopes, beliefs, endurances, strengths, survival skills, wisdoms are tested throughout the trip taken place between Minnesota to St. Louis. It was not only a road trip, it was their trip to be grown up and learning the basic rules how to survive in their new world after Great Depression.I definitely savored it and thought I haven’t read something such an amazing story for so long. It’s the best historical fiction I’ve read on this year. In the book, Krueger shows how children like Odie, Albert, Mose, and Emmy are vulnerable to physical and emotional abuse at the hands of adults who should be protecting them. He also highlights the injustices faced by ethnic groups, such as the Sioux people who are forced to attend the Lincoln School and have their culture and language erased. This Tender Land”, is a mesmerizing tale with wonderful characters, rich themes, extraordinary