This Tender Land is a work of Tenderness from a master of characters and story telling. Page turner. Kent Krueger is a national treasure of story telling. Don’t miss out.

Five motifs dominate this novel: the struggle with belief in God in the face of so much evil and pain in the world; the shameful legacy of treatment of Native Americans and their culture by whites; the Great Depression of the 1930s and the evangelical response to it,; and allusions to both “The Odyssey” and “The Wizard of Oz.” If this sounds like a lot to pack into one story, it is, and moreover, there are other issues that receive cameos in the story. For the most part, Krueger manages the melange adeptly, although occasionally the author seems to be “kitchen sinking it” as publishers call over-plotting of stories.

Odie (short for Odysseus) O’Banion is in his eighties as the book begins, looking back at the summer of 1932 and the journey taken by him and his comrades, “The Vagabonds.” Like the Greek hero Odysseus after whom Odie is named, he is on a quest to get home. Traveling by water (in this case, by canoe on rivers), he and his companions encounter a number of challenges, including mortal threats, as well as temptations, and struggle with the ire of the gods. Eventually, Odysseus reaches his destination.

The Wizard of Oz comes into play too with the four “Vagabonds” on the trip searching for something lacking in their lives. Odie wants a home. His older brother Albert wants to protect Odie. Their best friend Mose, a Sioux Indian who had his tongue cut out as a child, wants to know who he is. And Emmy Frost is searching for her role in life.

The four met at the Lincoln School for Native Americans near the Gilead River in Minnesota. Although the school is fictional, the horrific conditions described at the school are unfortunately not far from what obtained in such places, which were infamous for what happened to the children relocated there. In an Author’s Note at the end of the book, Krueger writes:

“The history of our nation’s treatment of Native Americans is one of the saddest litanies of human cruelty imaginable. … Beginning in the 1870s and continuing until the mid-twentieth century, hundreds of thousands of Native children were forcibly removed from their families and sent to live in boarding schools far from their reservation homes. . . . Life in an Indian boarding school wasn’t just harsh, it was soul-crushing. . . . They were punished for speaking their native language. They were emotionally, physically, and sexually abused. . . . many of these schools functioned as a pipeline for free labor, offering up the children as field hands or domestic help for local citizens.”

Orphan brothers Odie and Albert are the only whites at the school. We don’t find out how and why they got there until revelations at the end of the story. The boys form a bond with Mose, who has never been able to communicate until they taught him the sign language they learned from their deaf mother. Emmy is the daughter of a widowed teacher at the school; Mrs. Frost was one of the nicer people among a fairly frightful group of abusive adults.

A tragedy that takes the life of Mrs. Frost sets off a series of additional calamities that lead Odie, Albert, Mose, and Emmy to take off by canoe and set out for the Mississippi. But the cruel superintendent of the school has no intention of letting them escape, and they are often one step away from capture. The people they meet along the way and the adventures they have change their lives, and give them a new awareness of what the world is like, who they are, and what their destinies will be.

Odie characterizes himself as a storyteller, and justifies some of the fantastical elements of his tale by arguing “Our eyes perceive so dimly, and our brains are so easily confused. Far better, I believe, to be like children and open ourselves to every beautiful possibility, for there is nothing our hearts can imagine that is not so.”

Evaluation: I am a fan of Krueger, but I wasn’t as enamored with this book as some of his previous works. I appreciate that there are many issues that arouse a passionate response in him, but I thought the cramming in of so many of them in one story seemed to dilute the impact of each on the reader. Nevertheless, the saga is memorable in a number of ways, and would give book clubs a great deal to discuss.

There is a lot to admire about this novel. The author does a fabulous job of brining to life 1932 America including schools for Native American children, the impact of the Great Depression, traveling by train and boat and revivals. The four main characters are admirable and there is some suspense and surprises in the novel. The epilogue nicely wraps up an ending for the characters.

The downside was somewhere in the middle, the story waned and I found my interest slipping away. Overall, this is a good story and one I'd recommend.

William Kent Krueger is one of the finest writers writing today.

His protags Odie, Albert, Mose, and Emmy in This Tender Land, are characters you won't soon forget.

They have adventures and collect a wealth of characters during their journey set in a landscape beautifully rendered, during a time skillfully presented.

A treasure of a novel.

Thank you NetGalley and Atria Books for this arc.

This was an absolutely WONDERFUL read. I can't quite classify it as simply an historical read, or literary fiction, or a coming of age tale (a la Huckleberry Finn) as it is a magical combination of all three. All the characters, major and minor felt real. All of the places felt real. It moved along at a good pace even though I really wanted to know what came next for the Vagabonds, I just had to slow my reading down to savor what was happening now.

Thank you NetGalley and Atria Books again.