This Tender Land

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What follows is a series of adventures and missteps with the children, underfinanced and out-resourced, often relying on the intermittent kindness of strangers as they make their way slowly toward St. Louis by way of Nebraska. Their aim is to locate Aunt Julie, a relative who Odie barely remembers but who apparently sent money to the school for the boys --- money that they never saw. There are many surprises along the way, but none so great as when Odie reaches his final destination, and a chain-link series of events change everything for him. Andrea @PBR. "Fiction: A story about coming of age during the great depression". Princetonbookreview.com . Retrieved 2022-08-05. Do you think Mose’s story is a reminder of the resilience and strength shown by marginalized communities, even in the face of great adversity? She was in a rowboat on a river. I was in a boat, too, trying to catch up with her, trying to see her face. But no matter how hard I rowed, she was always too far ahead.”

That first night in the quiet room, I barely slept a wink. It was April, and there was still a chill in the wind sweeping out of the empty Dakotas. Our father was less than a week dead. Our mother had passed away two years before that.We had no kin in Minnesota, no friends, no one who knew us or cared about us. We were the only white boys in a school for Indians. How could it get any worse? Then I’d heard the rat and had spent the rest of those long, dark hours until daylight pressed against Albert and the iron door, my knees drawn up to my chin, my eyes pouring out tears that only Albert could see and that no one but him would have cared about anyway. The expectations for that companion novel were huge, crushing even. I spent nearly three years laboring over a story in which I tried to satisfy all those expectations. Unfortunately, the completed manuscript fell far short of what I'd hoped. In the end, I asked Atria not to publish the work. I'm thankful that they were understanding and were willing to give me another shot." Discuss the role that he played in the book with specific scenarios that made you wonder about his altruistic abilities.Yes, the four are trying to escape their present environment, but the three boys are also running from the law. It is mistakenly believed that they have kidnapped Emmy. a b c "It's no mystery why William Kent Krueger's latest is one of the fall's most anticipated books. Everybody loves this guy". Twin Cities. 24 August 2019.

Later that night, they see something unexpected: "Sister Eve pulled a cigarette from a small, silver case, and the trumpet player lifted a lighter and offered her a flame. She blew a flourish of smoke . . . drew on the cigarette, then her lips formed a little O and she puffed out two perfect smoke rings . . ." 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.”

Krueger does a good job in portraying the atrocities at the Lincoln School and bringing historical events in focus that made the book even better. I was horrified by ways the children were treated and how abusive the Lincoln School was. For your next book club gathering, plan to meet somewhere outdoors and go on an adventure whether by foot or canoe. Discuss with your group what you notice about the landscape around you. How is the Midwestern landscape a part of Odie’s story and what connections to This Tender Land can you make to your own life and the place that you live?

As orphans Odie and Albert were adopted to Minnesota’s Lincoln School for Native American even though they are white. We find out why they are the only white boys in school of Indian children later in the book. This Tender Land is the third stand-alone novel by award-winning, best-selling American author, William Kent Krueger. It’s 1932, and twelve-year-old Odie O’Banion, his older brother, Albert, his Sioux friend, Moses Washington and Little Emmy Frost are paddling a canoe down the Gilead River, heading towards the Mississippi. They’re on the run from the police, wanted for theft, kidnapping and murder. This book is an absorbing tale of love, loss, and endurance and will fill your heart with the warmth that comes with feeling needed, helpful, and wanted.

I did want to believe that God was my shepherd and that somehow he was leading me through this dark valley of Lincoln School and I shouldn’t be afraid… But the truth I saw every day was that we were on our own and our safety depended not on God but on ourselves and on helping one another.” The Lincoln School, an orphanage with horrible caregivers who beat the children and subjected them to even worse daily working conditions, is where we meet Odie, Albert, Mose, and then Emmy. In the story, Odie speaks of the journey he and the other are on as an odyssey. Do you see echoes of Homer’s epic poem in the children’s experiences? If so, can you identify Homer’s poetic counterpart for each section of the story? Lying on my blanket beside Albert, I was happy to have him for a brother, though I had no intention of telling him so. I didn’t always understand him, and I knew that, more often than not, I was a bafflement to him as well, but the heart isn’t the logical organ of the body, and I loved my brother deeply and fell asleep in the warmth of his company.”

In 1932, four orphans take to the Mississippi River to flee the horrible conditions they have been living in. Odie and Albert are brothers. Odie is high-spirited and spend a lot of time in the solitary room, a shed with no comforts and usually a beating beforehand. Albert fares a bit better as he is a mechanical whiz. Mose is their best friend, a huge boy of Indian descent who was found in a ditch when he was four with his dead mother, his tongue cut out. Emmy is recently orphaned, her mother dead in a tornado. All are fleeing from the Lincoln Indian Training School where a cruel couple is in charge and the children there are treated as nothing more than money machines.We follow them as they escape with Emmy who didn't originally live at the school and move farther and farther away from Lincoln School and the horrors they had endured.