Can't Wait Wednesday - Between Earth and Sky by Amanda Skenandore

Linking up with Wishful Endings today :)

Every week, I skim through the "Coming Soon" list at Barnes and Noble for the following week.  

I love looking at the covers and selecting finalists for my upcoming favorites.
Yes, I'm a book nerd.

If I find a cover that interests me, then I open it up and read the blurb.

There are way too many books to read for me to waste one more second, so a book has to grab me...where I am...in that moment.
Most of the time, I can't even predict what that moment looks like.
It's up to the book really ;)

I force myself to stop at 1 choice.  Once I find it, I stop looking...until next week :)

Without further adieu, here's my Can't Wait choice among the "Coming Soon" selections on Barnes and Noble for the week of April 23, 2018:

Between Earth and Sky by Amanda Skenandore

Publisher: Kensington

Publication Date: 4/24/2018

Pages: 336

Here's the synopsis from Barnes and Noble: 

(I've highlighted in red the parts that yell at me loud and clear that I must read this book!)

In Amanda Skenandore’s provocative and profoundly moving debut, set in the tragic intersection between white and Native American culture, a young girl learns about friendship, betrayal, and the sacrifices made in the name of belonging.

On a quiet Philadelphia morning in 1906, a newspaper headline catapults Alma Mitchell back to her past. A federal agent is dead, and the murder suspect is Alma’s childhood friend, Harry Muskrat. Harry—or Asku, as Alma knew him—was the most promising student at the “savage-taming” boarding school run by her father, where Alma was the only white pupil. Created in the wake of the Indian Wars, the Stover School was intended to assimilate the children of neighboring reservations. Instead, it robbed them of everything they’d known—language, customs, even their names—and left a heartbreaking legacy in its wake. 

The bright, courageous boy Alma knew could never have murdered anyone. But she barely recognizes the man Asku has become, cold and embittered at being an outcast in the white world and a ghost in his own. Her lawyer husband, Stewart, reluctantly agrees to help defend Asku for Alma’s sake. To do so, Alma must revisit the painful secrets she has kept hidden from everyone—especially Stewart.

Told in compelling narratives that alternate between Alma’s childhood and her present life, Between Earth and Sky is a haunting and complex story of love and loss, as a quest for justice becomes a journey toward understanding and, ultimately, atonement.

About the Author

Amanda Skenandore is a historical fiction writer and registered nurse. In writing Between Earth and Sky, she has drawn on the experiences of a close relative, a member of the Ojibwe Tribe, who survived an Indian mission school in the 1950s. Between Earth and Sky is Amanda’s first novel. She lives in Las Vegas, Nevada. Readers can visit her website at www.amandaskenandore.com.

I was a little nervous that Between Earth and Sky would be depressing, but the phrase "ultimate atonement" leads me to believe I won't be left bereft at the end of this complicated story.  Anybody else heard of this one?