Join us for a discussion of the book This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger. Copies of the book are available at the reference desk.

"Odie O'Banion remembers 1932, when he was 12 and had one of the great adventures of his life. During the Depression, Odie and his older brother, Albert, were the only white children at the Lincoln Indian Training School. The O'Banions were orphans, while the other children had been taken from their parents to have their native cultures and languages beaten out of them. Mrs. Brickman, "the Black Witch," oversaw the abusive school, and after the tragic death of a protector, Odie and Albert fled, along with two other "vagabonds," taking to the river to escape. There they find kindness and assistance in unexpected places. Krueger's second coming-of-age story is not the sequel to Ordinary Grace; it's his version of Huckleberry Finn or the Odyssey, as adolescents are forced to move toward adulthood. It's a remarkable story of a search for home that also reveals the abusive treatment of Native American children in schools and the wanderings of people during the Depression."

-- Library Journal