This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger

 The story takes place during the summer of 1932, in the middle of the Great Depression. Odie and his brother, Albert, team up with Moses, a mute Native boy and Emma, a recent orphan against the evil of the Black Witch and the Lincoln School for Native children.

With no choice but to run, these friends' escape and follow the Gilead River towards St. Lewis, where the brothers have an aunt and possibly a place to call home. The trip is anything but easy and the group has several adventures, always staying just ahead of the law and the Black Witch.

The story is an epic quest with the depression and central America as a background. It is definitely a coming-of-age story as the children are introduced to situations and ideas they have never encountered before. Krueger, whose Cork O’Connor series is loved by thousands, follows his historical fiction, Ordinary Grace, with a tale of a time when the entire world was suffering through the devastation of economic collapse and hid so much cruelty as desperate people stooped to low levels to survive. It reflects a lot of today’s society.

An important read!