This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger

Set during the summer of 1932, This Tender Land is a story that embraces tragedy and cruelty, kindness and love, murder and salvation. Most of all, it is about hope. Hope that we can find home, hope that we will find love, hope that life offers more than terror and injustice and cruelty. Hope that we can forgive and be forgiven.

This mythic story is a combination of Huckleberry Finn for its river journey and episodic adventures, with characters and events encountered from The Odyssey, and the darkness of The Night of the Hunter with children under threat fleeing downriver. And it recalls to mind the Book of Job as Odie grapples with the nature of God.

In 1932 Minnesota, orphaned brothers Albert and Odie are sent by their aunt to a Native American school, where she believes they are being well taken care of. The Brickmans run the school, siphoning off funds for themselves and allowing cruelty and abuse to reign. The boys befriend the mute Native American boy Mose. Albert and Mose are hard workers, but Odie rebels and is often punished. They have a friend in the teacher Voght, and the kind, widowed music teacher who offers to take the boys into her home to help run her farm. But a tornado takes her life, leaving her daughter Emmy in the hands of the cruel school headmistress. 

The 'tornado god' wrecks more disaster in Odie's life, leading to an accidental death. The children together flee down the Mississippi River in a canoe, pursued by the headmistress of the school and the police who believes the girl Emmy was kidnapped. 

William Kent Krueger writes, "I love this book every bit as much as I loved Ordinary Grace," and that offering this book he is "offering his heart." I, too, loved it every bit as Ordinary Grace, if not more.

It's a big 400-page book, engrossing and beautiful and heartbreaking. There is a lot of 'God talk' between Odie and the people he met who help him understand the timeless problem of why God allows evil in this world. 

I was given access to a free egalley by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Read my review of Ordinary Grace here.

This Tender Land 

by William Kent Krueger

Atria Books 

Publication September 3, 2019

hardcover $27.99

ISBN13: 9781476749297

Ordinary Grace by William Kent Kreuger

Yesterday I finished another Kindle ebook, Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger. I was very impressed that Krueger has captured an honest and realistic portrait of a Methodist parsonage family. Having been married to a United Methodist clergyman for over 41 years, and having lived in nine parsonages, I am quite familiar with what the life is like.

The novel is told from the viewpoint of the middle child,  Frank Drum, who in 1961 is thirteen years old. Frank is the rebellious child, breaking rules set for his protection. His older sister is a musical prodigy, and his younger brother at age eleven follows Frank everywhere.

Their father is a patient, good man, but whose experience in the Korean War left him with personal demons. After the war he gave up the idea of becoming a lawyer and went into ministry, to the vexation of his talented and beautiful wife who had not signed up for being a pastor's wife. They live in a small town in Minnesota, where expectations for the family are high-- and constricting.

Over the summer a series of events force Frank and his family to reevaluate everything they thought they knew about each other, their community, and God. Their reactions are rendered spot-on by Krueger, as is how they individually and as a family move on from tragedy. There is a mystery to be solved, with enough red herrings to keep the reader guessing.

I appreciate that the faith issues are honestly portrayed, without mawkish or trivial sentiments to cheapen the story. Real people struggle with anger at God, loss of faith, and their religious commitment. The 'ordinary grace' that resolves the story's faith journey is the miracle of a child's simple faith that begins the healing for which Frank is so desperate.

To learn more about the author visit  http://www.williamkentkrueger.com/