finished reading

There are echoes in this book of The Wizard of Oz, The Odyssey, and Charles Dickens (the plight of orphans).  This is a storyteller's tale.  And William Kent Krueger is a magnificent storyteller.

Some of my favorite quotes:
“Of all that we're asked to give others in this life, the most difficult to offer may be forgiveness.”
― William Kent Krueger, This Tender Land

“If we were perfect, the light he shines on us would just bounce right off. But the wrinkles, they catch the light. And the cracks, that’s how the light gets inside us. When I pray, Odie, I never pray for perfection. I pray for forgiveness, because it’s the one prayer I know will always be answered.”
― William Kent Krueger, This Tender Land

“Ask me, God’s right here. In the dirt, the rain, the sky, the trees, the apples, the stars in the cottonwoods. In you and me, too. It’s all connected and it’s all God. Sure this is hard work, but it’s good work because it’s a part of what connects us to this land, Buck. This beautiful, tender land.”
― William Kent Krueger, This Tender Land

“We breathe love in and we breathe love out. It's the essence of our existence, the very air of our souls.”
― William Kent Krueger, This Tender Land

From the publisher:

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.

...a magnificent novel about four orphans on a life-changing odyssey during the Great Depression.