Book of the Week

Each week CSHS librarian Ms. Sarah Chase releases her recommended reading. This week’s suggestion is “This Tender Land” by William Kent Krueger.  Odie O’Banion and his brother, Albert, are the only two white boys at the Lincoln Indian Training School in Minnesota during the depression. The school is a merciless place where Native American children are forced to give up their language and customs to be assimilated into white society. Odie and Albert wound up there after the death of their bootlegger father.  Many of the staff members are vicious, but with the help of a sympathetic teacher, Odie and Albert escape, along with their Sioux friend, Moses, and the young daughter of a teacher who was recently killed by a tornado.  The goal of the four orphans is to take their canoe downriver, eventually landing in Saint Louis, where Odie and Albert’s aunt lives.  Along the way, they have many adventures, some dangerous and some life-changing.  Long-hidden secrets are revealed.  You’ll love this life-affirming novel that has elements of Huck Finn’s and Odysseus’s journeys.  Highly recommended! This was our faculty/staff book club selection this month.  There is a copy available in the senior high library and it is also available as an eBook on our Overdrive library.