The Land of Everlasting Sky

2026 Kirkus Indie Awards Finalist in Memoir

“Deeply moving and eye-opening, this memoir confronts the centuries of systemic bigotry that have led to Indigenous erasure.”—Kirkus Reviews
“… a powerfully evocative discourse on race, culture, and personal empowerment which weaves together a seemingly disparate set of values and observations, creating a narrative powerfully impactful in its tone and approach to life.”—Midwest Book Review

“At once luminous and searing, The Land of Everlasting Sky reminds us that our histories are all interwoven via the land that nurtures us, and the way forward as a nation lies in recognizing our shared culpability and our shared humanity.”—Story Circle Network

“Thoughtful, honest, and thoroughly researched, the book weaves together personal reflection and larger questions of justice, belonging, and reconciliation.”—Northern Wilds
“The Land of Everlasting Sky is a beautiful and heartbreaking memoir that delves deeply into notions of place, identity, reconciliation, and justice. Jill Swenson achieves something devastating in this uncommonly honest and vulnerable story—bravo.”—Nickolas Butler, author of Shotgun Lovesongs and A Forty Year Kiss
“A lamentation for sacred places on land and in the heart.”—Carolyn Porter, author of Marcel’s Letters
“The past is ever present in Jill Swenson’s The Land of Everlasting Sky, a raw, unsparing memoir that braids together history, grief, love, and loss into a moving portrayal of identity, place, and belonging.”—Cathryn J. Prince, journalist and author of For the Love of Labor
“If a young Jill Swenson breathed in Kakaygeesick’s spirit, this memoir is the long-awaited exhale—a guided meditation blending research and memory, facts and dreams, history and hallucination.”—Laura Jean Baker, author of The Motherhood Affidavits
“Swenson writes with the hope that remembering might not exactly offer legal justice, but perhaps can offer a bit of historical justice.”—Elizabeth Rynecki, documentary filmmaker, podcaster, and author of Chasing Portraits
“The Land of Everlasting Sky—quite literally—takes readers down a narrow road to the deep north. It’s an emotional and spiritual journey into the heart of a family’s history, as well as the forgotten history of a uniquely rugged and remote geography. A compelling and affecting tale.”—David McGlynn, author of Everything We Could Do
“To make sense of her personal losses and the losses of the Ojibway people of Minnesota, Jill Swenson takes us on a uniquely absorbing journey into the past, through her own deeply meaningful relationships to people and place as well as through painful, painstaking research. Like two rivers flowing to the same sea, these twinned stories feed a larger American story—one of grief and hope—of how we carry each other’s histories within us.”—Eleanor Henderson, author of Everything I Have Is Yours

Jill D. Swenson grew up in the Twin Cities and moved to Wisconsin in high school. She graduated from Lawrence University and earned an MA and PhD from The University of Chicago before going on to teach journalism and media studies at the University of Georgia-Athens and earn tenure at Ithaca College. For a decade she lived off the grid on a small-scale sustainable farm in upstate New York; now she lives in Appleton, Wisconsin, where she works as an editor and literary consultant, belongs to a curling club and a poetry group, and enjoys walking her dog.

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