Review by Booklist Review
In northern Sweden, the indigenous Sámi people have traditionally worked the land as reindeer herders. It's a way of life that raises the ire of many neighbors, one of whom launches a personal vendetta against nine-year-old Elsa and her family. Robert Isaksson often steals the family's reindeer to sell their meat on the black market, but he is just as apt to torture and slaughter reindeer to send a message that the Sámi culture is not welcome. Year after year, the family loses animals to his heinous attacks, filing hundreds of police reports that are blatantly ignored. In the face of such disdain, Elsa grows from a frightened child to a brave teenage activist, taking on the criminal justice system at great personal cost. Of Sámi descent herself, award-winning journalist Laestadius offers a rare, multigenerational look at the diverse and deep-rooted cultural heritage of this traditional arctic community. Akin to gritty stories of Old West cattle rustlers evading the law and society, Laestadius' unvarnished saga demonstrates the universality of oppression and revenge and conflicts over land and race.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In Laestadius's nuanced English-language debut, the fragile peace of a Sámi tribal community in Arctic Lappland is shattered when a poacher begins to prey on their sacred reindeer herd. Nine-year-old Elsa witnesses a poaching in 2008, and after the police refuse to investigate, she keeps quiet about it in order to protect her family. Eventually, the Sámi begin to push back against escalating threats of violence from neighbors if they refuse to keep silent about the poaching, and amid the tension and danger Elsa loses an uncle to suicide and her brother becomes estranged from the family. At the heart of the tribe's plight is that they regard the poaching as murder, while the unsympathetic authorities see it as simple theft. As Elsa grows up under the shadow of her peoples' continued exploitation by the poachers, she dreams of revenge against them, but is unprepared for the fallout in 2018 after a poacher is found dead. Though the pace can be slack, the sense of place and character development make for an affecting portrait of the Sámi's disenfranchisement. It's a solid story of a family torn apart by cultural tensions. (Jan.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
DEBUT In this story of Sámi life, named Book of the Year in Sweden, Elsa, the nine-year-old daughter of Sámi reindeer herders, skis to the corral to see her favorite reindeer, only to find her dead. Still on the scene, the reindeer poacher, Robert Isaksson, threatens to kill Elsa and her family if she tells anyone. Divided into three parts covering the years 2008, 2018, and 2019, the novel describes the lives of Elsa and her community who live below the arctic circle in Sweden. Through adept characterization, the novel highlights the problems and issues the Sámi face--racism, loss of culture, alcoholism, suicide, governmental mistakes and neglect, and the devastating effects of climate change. As Elsa becomes a young woman, she begins to challenge the traditional gender roles of her community and the injustice of Swedish society by pushing back against the indifference of the police and their inability to stop poachers such as Isaksson. (While the Sámi view poaching as murder, the police categorize the crime as theft and do not actively pursue poachers.) Note that the chapter titles are written in Sámi. VERDICT While the novel could have benefited from tighter pacing, award-winning author/journalist Laestadius, who is herself of Sámi descent, succeeds in capturing Sámi life.--Jacqueline Snider
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A traditional culture deals with threats from inside and outside its tightknit community. Kick-started by the disturbing poaching and slaughter of a reindeer that was part of a Sámi family's herd in remote northern Sweden, Laestadius' saga details the inequities faced by the contemporary Indigenous Sámi population. Elsa, a 9-year-old to whom the murdered reindeer had been entrusted, is threatened by the hunter and scared into not revealing his identity to her family or authorities. Previous reindeer slaughters had gone unpursued by local police since this sort of crime against the Sámi (and their way of life) was considered mere theft. Frustrated by the seeming passivity with which the group accepts the situation, Elsa sets upon her own path as she grows into adulthood: She questions traditional gender roles as well as the failure of local police to apprehend the hunter who is torturing and killing her community's reindeer. The legacies of long-held social prejudices against the Indigenous group--racism, economic insecurity, and the traumas borne by the community's elders who had been removed from the group in childhood and sent to "nomad schools"--continue to haunt Sámi life with devastating effects. Elsa must reconcile her own quest for justice with the need for some in the group to just survive. Looming over the tale, which unfolds over the course of more than a decade, is the specter of climate change and its impacts on the traditional Sámi herding methods. Laestadius, who is Sámi and of Tornedalian descent, indicates in her acknowledgements that the novel is based upon actual occurrences in Sápmi territory. Willson-Broyles' translation from Swedish is matter-of-fact and incorporates many phrases and words from the Sámi language. A revelatory account of not-well-known assaults on the rights of an Indigenous group. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
