The End of Drum-Time by Hanna Pylväinen

THE 100 MUST-READ BOOKS OF 2023 by Time Magazine #21

In Hanna Pylväinen’s second novel, it’s 1851 and a Lutheran minister in a remote Scandinavian village is intent on converting Swedes, Finns, and a group of Sámi reindeer herders to his religion. After he starts to convince even the most skeptical, his followers grow tenfold. Then, something shifts: a prominent herder buys in big time, and his spiritual awakening leads him to abandon his son Ivvár, who is forced to tend to the family’s reindeer all alone. Ivvár happens to run into the minister’s daughter—each of them a puzzle for the other to figure out—and she prepares to join him on the annual spring migration. The End of Drum-Time is a deeply researched story about obedience, defiance, and what happens when the tectonic plates of two different cultures collide. —Meg Zukin