This Tender Land

This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger
Fiction
2019 Atria Books
Finished on March 21, 2020
Rating: 3/5 (Good)

Publisher's Blurb:

From the author of Ordinary Grace, a magnificent novel about four orphans on a life-changing odyssey during the early years of the Great Depression--a book that shines new light on a pivotal time in American history.

In 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.

I've read and enjoyed a couple of books by William Kent Krueger (Ordinary Grace and Iron Lake), so I was thrilled to receive an ARC of his second stand-alone novel, This Tender Land. With other books calling for my attention, I let both my mom and my husband read it first, since they both loved Ordinary Grace. They both gave this new release high praise, so even before reading it, I added it to my list for this year's book group nominations. Not surprisingly, it won and was selected for our March read. Sadly, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we were forced to cancel our meeting. 

I loved the lyrical prose of Ordinary Grace and went into this new book with high hopes, especially since everyone I know who has read it has loved it. It took me a long time to get interested in the story and once I did, it still didn't call to me the way Ordinary Grace did. I thought it was a good tale, but I didn't mark any favorite passages and I was eager to finish and move on to something else. Whether a case of too much hype or the distraction of the Coronavirus, I'm sorry to say that it missed its mark with this reader. Looking at all the five-star reviews on Goodreads, I am obviously in the minority, but thankfully, I have 16 more Cork O'Connor mysteries (Krueger's popular series) to look forward to.

I received a complimentary copy of this audiobook. All opinions are my own.