A recurring question in trauma research is whether grief can be inherited.

Laestadius' second novel after the acclaimed "Theft" (her eleventh book but first novel for adults), is a depiction of how a trauma is inherited for generations in Sapmi.

"Punishment is a fictional

story but unfortunately based on real events" as the afterword says.

The nomadic school was part of the Swedish - colonial - Sami policy which gave Sami children a poorer and shorter education - reindeer-herding Sami were not considered to need civilization and modernity, but under the slogan "a patch should be a patch" they were prevented from becoming full citizens. 

That loss of identity has only in recent years begun to be described with greater impact.

Klaus Härö's children's film in 2003, "Elina - as if I wasn't there" (a telling title), Amanda Kernell's "Sameblod" from 2016 and now more and more novels. 

And it is a

long violent story about the fox shears that cut the lives of so many.

The children were put in school to preserve their identity, but were taught to be ashamed of who they were.

Paradoxically, it was forbidden to speak Sami. 

Their families rarely dared to protest.

The school was the authority that wore "the fine clothes every day".

That shame was also inherited. 

In Laestadius' shift

between times, fashion, hairstyles and eating habits change, but nature remains, and the cemeteries.

And the distances home. 

Because this is a collective novel about time, about silence and homesickness, which captures portraits in flight through lines, behaviors, gestures.

A childhood can be revealed by how one looks for a job in home care, drives a car or receives a beating. 

It is also a novel about revenge, which for a long time leaves the reader hoping that the evil housewife will meet her fate in the end.

Laestadius allows Sami to

organically feature in the text as a flow of vindication.

When she describes a gossipy woman with the words "She had no living room", like Sara Lidman in the innovative "Hjortronlandet" in 1955, it is a nice way to give presence to a literary tradition, but also an image of integrity as the basis for becoming person.

It is a collective novel full of long-held life: immersive, brutal and wistful.