Plano Reads: Join Second Tuesday Readers on Zoom June 8 for ‘This Tender Land’

Second Tuesday Book Club will meet from 7 p.m. to 8:15 p.m. on Tuesday, June 8, using Zoom. You can join this Zoom session via computer or phone. Email Cathe Spencer at cathes@plano.gov with questions; register online here.

This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger

It is summer 1932, and America struggles in the midst of the Great Depression. Teenaged orphan Odie O’Banion is an unwilling and rebellious resident of Minnesota’s Lincoln Indian Training School, but a shocking series of events forces him to flee in a canoe down the Gilead River, with his brother Albert, his friend Mose, and six-year-old Emmy, in search of a new life, and a home somewhere for them all.

Booklist calls this epic tale of four valiant orphans “a deeply satisfying odyssey…richly imagined, exceptionally well-plotted and written, [and] most of all, a compelling, often haunting, captivating novel.”

Reviewers at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune praised it as “a picaresque tale of adventure during the Great Depression. Part Grapes of Wrath, part Huckleberry Finn, Krueger’s novel is a journey over inner and outer terrain toward wisdom and freedom.”

This Tender Land is available in these formats at Plano Public Library:
Print | eBook | Large Print | Playaway

William Kent Krueger lives and works in Minnesota’s Twin Cities. He currently writes a mystery series set in the north woods of Minnesota featuring Cork O’Connor, the former sheriff of Tamarack County and a man of mixed heritage—part Irish and part Ojibwe. The newest book in the series, Lightning Strike, will be published in August.

His novel Ordinary Grace received the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award for the best mystery novel of 2013. This Tender Land is not a sequel to Ordinary Grace, but Mr. Krueger thinks of it as a companion work.

Mr. Krueger comments, “It’s been such a joy to write the tale of Odie O’Banion and the other Vagabonds on their great river odyssey in the summer of 1932. I’ve poured the best of myself into this story and I invite you to experience all of its remarkable twists and turns. As Odie says in the very beginning, “Open yourself to every possibility, for there is nothing your heart can imagine that is not so.”

This Tender Land was selected by Richardson Public Library’s Richardson Reads One Book for its 2020 program of events, including its finale, Mr. Krueger’s public talk in North Texas. The coronavirus pandemic led to a new schedule, and currents plans are for Mr. Krueger to appear in Richardson this September.

Registration Details

June 8, Second Tuesday Book Club at 7 p.m.
Register here
Join a live discussion of our June title, This Tender Land on Zoom.