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Title details for Punished by Ann-Helén Laestadius - Wait list

Punished

A Novel

by Ann-Helén Laestadius
Rachel Willson-Broyles
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From the internationally bestselling author of the "extraordinary" (Fredrik Backman) novel Stolen comes a harrowing story—inspired by true events—of five Indigenous children forced to attend a government-run boarding school in 1950s Sweden, revealing the emotional scars they carry thirty years later.
In the 1950s near the Arctic Circle, seven-year-olds Jon-Ante, Else-Maj, Nilsa, Marge, and Anne-Risten are taken from their families. As children of Sámi reindeer herders, the Swedish state has mandated they attend a "nomad school" where they are forbidden to speak their native language. As the children visit home only sporadically, their parents know little about the abuse they face, much of it at the hands of the housemother, Rita. Those who dare to speak up are silenced.

Thirty years later, the five children have chosen different paths to cope with the past. Else-Maj holds strong in her Sámi identity but has turned to religion for comfort, while Anne-Risten now goes by Anne to hide her heritage from friends. Nilsa herds reindeer like his father but harbors a lot of anger, and Jon-Ante struggles with traumatic memories from the school. Then there's Marge, who is about to adopt a daughter from Colombia, but can't help questioning if it's right to take a child from her homeland.

Then suddenly, housemother Rita reappears. Now an old, frail woman claiming to have God on her side, she acts like nothing ever happened. But the five former students have neither forgotten nor forgiven her. As the narrative shifts between each of their perspectives, the novel asks: If you had the chance to punish the person who hurt you as a child, would you?

Based on the author's family story, Punished is a searing novel about loss, memory, cultural erasure, and community that vibrates with righteous rage over one nation's greatest betrayals of its native people.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    February 4, 2025

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9781668045527

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9781668045527
      • File size: 2587 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Booklist

      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.

      COPYRIGHT(2025) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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