January 1, 2025
In northernmost Sweden in the 1950s, children of indigenous reindeer-herding families are forced by the government to attend a "nomad school," where they will be indoctrinated into the Swedish culture, primarily through eradication of their native language, S�mi. Separated from their families for months at a time, seven-year-olds Jon-Ante, Else-Maj, Marge, Anne-Risten, and Nilsa are at the mercy of both a strict and unyielding educational system as well as the sociopathic abuses the school's housemother employs to carry out these edicts. Laestadius continues to illuminate S�mi life (see the acclaimed Stolen, 2023) in a tale inspired by her own mother's experience in such an institution. She follows the lives of her five protagonists for 30 years to illustrate how early childhood traumas inform the struggles they face as adults. Filled with horrifying episodes of physical mistreatment and emotional damage that will leave permanent scars, Laestadius' novel is not for the faint of heart, yet its empathetic treatment of personal strength and courage in the face of systemic exploitation and marginalization redeems an otherwise bleakly sobering and unsettling saga.
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