Punished

In the 1950s, five Sámi children are taken from their reindeer herding families and forced into a government-run boarding school north of the Arctic Circle. Speaking Sámi is forbidden. Joiking is sinful. The housemother punishes with a birch rod. Thirty years later, the five former students have chosen different paths to cope with the past, until their old housemother reappears, frail and claiming God’s protection. Punished (originally Straff) is based on true events surrounding one of the Swedish state’s greatest betrayals of its indigenous people.

Why Consider This One

If Stolen showed Laestadius writing about contemporary Sámi life under threat, Punished goes to the historical root of that threat. The novel moves between the 1950s boarding school and the 1980s, when the survivors must decide what to do with their pain. The five-perspective structure gives the trauma both breadth and intimacy.

This is not the ideal starting point because it builds on the empathy and understanding that Stolen establishes. Readers who come to Punished already caring about Sámi experience will feel its impact more deeply. But for readers drawn specifically to historical fiction about indigenous boarding schools, this stands powerfully on its own.

What to Expect

A novel told through five perspectives, alternating between childhood and adulthood. The boarding school scenes are harrowing but precise, never exploitative. The adult chapters carry a different kind of weight: the question of whether forgiveness is possible, or even desirable. Laestadius writes grief and rage with the same steady hand she brings to the frozen landscape.