If you too enjoy a story brought to life by its environment (looking at you, Where the Crawdads Sing fans!) then snuggle up under an autumn tree with a copy of This Tender Land.

Odie and his compatriots remind me of the savvy, adventurous children that occupied books from my childhood-the kids from Bridge to Terabithia come to mind-rendered all the more believable by William Kent Krueger’s lyrical prose. This book is everything I want in a fall read: warm, heartfelt, and chock-full of observations on the natural world. When circumstances force Odie, Albert, and two fellow orphans to escape, their getaway takes them on a grand adventure, crossing paths with strangers and witnessing the effects of the Great Depression. Odie spends his days doing school-enforced manual labor, playing his contraband harmonica-and landing in detention. The book begins with Odie, a young boy with a good heart but a penchant for getting in trouble, who suffers alongside his brother Albert at a cruel boarding school.

It was with this in mind that I picked up This Tender Land, a nature-filled adventure story set in rural Minnesota.

Krueger had written a companion novel to Ordinary Grace, that was accepted and revised, but he pulled it at the last minute and revised it substantially over the next four years, incorporating elements. Give me a character canoeing down a river, or a vivid description of changing fall leaves, and I am, shall we say, a happy camper. This Tender Land is a book written by William Kent Krueger and published by Atria Books (now owned by Simon & Schuster 1) in September 2019. As this is neither practical (I have no outdoorsy skills) nor feasible (the woods are very far away), I like turning to the next best thing: books set in the great outdoors. Because I live in a city that’s more concrete than grass, I sometimes go weeks without spending time in nature-which means I fantasize about tossing my phone down a subway grate and setting off into the woods a lot.

Book this tender land