William Kent Krueger

Fiction 2019/ 450 pages

William Kent Krueger is nothing if not a phenomenal writer.  I know the major characters in this book so well ... Odie, Albert, Mose, and Emmy.  I feel as though I could predict how each would act, if they showed up at my home today.  I know their mannerisms, their personalities, their gifts, their values, their fears, their failings.  Krueger truly shines at developing characters.

In This Tender Land, three young White kids and one Native leave an Indian school where they, as well as the many Indian children, were abused.  The year is 1932 and there is no love between the White man and the Native population.  Emmy is six, our narrator Odie is 12, his big brother Albert is 16, and I don't think we know exactly how old Mose is, though we do know someone cut out his tongue when he was four and he is mute.  Odie and Albert end up at the Indian school when their parents die because there is no room at the white orphanage.  Emmy becomes an orphan during the telling of this tale.

The four children, who are fast friends, run away from the school in a canoe, traveling the Gilead River and then the Minnesota and finally the Mississippi.  This Tender Land is all about their travels and who they meet along their way to St. Louis, where Albert and Odie have an aunt, Aunt Julia.

The story is grim at times, heart-warming most often, and full of good people and bad people the four vagabonds encounter in their travels down the rivers.  While it is a novel, clearly the foundation is rich in research and learning about what our Midwest was like during the Great Depression and a time when we had not come to peace with the Natives who occupied this land for centuries.  You will meet many interesting and entertaining characters in this novel in addition to our four main characters.

I give it three hearts instead of four, because I felt it dragged and was slow at times.  Many of you, as well as many reviewers, will disagree with this assessment.  As always, take my assessment with a grain of salt and enjoy This Tender Land for what it gives you.

November 2024