THIS TENDER LAND by William Kent Krueger

 

 When Mr. Krueger appeared on a zoom interview last month I had never heard of him.  He cast himself as a “storyteller” and this 2019 novel is all of that and more. It is set in 1932 and gets its historical grounding from a host of atmospheric detail about the great depression, prohibition, and the persecution of native Americans.

The narrator is an older man who speaks through his twelve-year self. Odie and his slightly older brother, Albert, are the only two white boys at a Native American school where they are fed little, worked hard, and punished for any infraction. When Odie commits a serious crime, the two boys decide to flee. They are joined by a native American friend, Mose (who is physically strong but mute), and a little orphan girl named Emmy. Each of the four are alike in their search for some kind of anchor or home within a tender land that seems to change from bountiful to indiscriminately cruel with tornadic fury. 

The youngsters travel a sequence of rivers in a canoe with the goal of reaching a relative of Odie’s and Albert’s in St. Louis. The water journey takes on symbolic overtones by drawing on elements of both Mark Twain and Homer.  At each stop on their trek the vagabonds meet new friends or new enemies. And always the long arm of the law is never far behind. There are joyful sections when the group meets Sister Eve and her revivalist crusade or a remarkable Hooverville family with a young daughter, but the frightening sections are full of tension and violence.  Even though hope is always around the corner, I guarantee you that the twists at the end will keep you in surprise mode.  

 Although Kreuger is a plotter not a plodder, I would be remiss in not mentioning his evocative prose.  From a number of examples this one will suffice. “The sun, which was the color of a blood orange, hung nailed above the horizon, and long bars of red light came through the gaps in the old barn walls and lay on the brown dirt floor like little streams of hot lava.”

 Krueger lives in Minnesota and has also written a series of detective novels featuring a retired sheriff named Cork O’connor. I am going to check out one of those next. I give this stand-alone a strong 4.5 out of 5.