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.
"Punished is a thoroughly harrowing read, a work of fiction that chronicles a terrible moment in history and illustrates how trauma instilled in such moments lasts for decades. Through a series of memorable characters whom we encounter as both children and adults, Laestadius gives a sense of lived-in regrets and long-kept secrets." —Words Without Borders
"A heartrending narrative of five Indigenous Sámi children forcibly sent to boarding school by the Swedish state in the 1950s. . . .This moving tale shines an important spotlight on a story little-known to most American readers.” —Publishers Weekly
“Laestadius continues to illuminate Sámi life (see the acclaimed Stolen, 2023) in a tale inspired by her own mother’s experience in such an institution . . . [An] empathetic treatment of personal strength and courage in the face of systemic exploitation and marginalization.” —Booklist
“Ann-Helén Laestadius’s Punished is a revelation—a heartfelt exploration of identity, justice, and belonging, written with unflinching honesty and poetic grace. This novel doesn’t just tell a story; it demands that we feel every heartbeat along the way.” —Jamie Ford, New York Times bestselling author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
