This Tender Land by William Kent Kreuger.
This 2019 novel is a follow-up to Ordinary Grace, which Kreuger wrote in 2013 and received very positive reviews. Set in the 1960s, it is part mystery but primarily a coming-of-age novel. It’s about a family led by a minister who, like his wife and his kids, sometimes has trouble in matters of faith. The story is told through the voice of the minister’s son, 13-year-old Frank Drum. He speaks in hindsight 40 years later and opens the book with, “It was a summer in which death, in visitation, assumed many forms. Accident. Nature. Suicide. Murder.” I gave it a brief review in July of 2020.
This Tender Land is set in 1932 and is the story of two brothers, Odie, who is 12 years old, and Albert, who is 16. Their parents died when they were very young. The state of Minnesota sent them to the Lincoln Indian Training School for native kids who have lost their families, even though Odie and Albert were white kids.
The school is literally brutal, with heavy physical punishment meted out for real and imagined infractions. At the beginning of the book, Odie is about to be sent off to the reformatory because of his resistance to the arbitrary rules. Mrs. Brickman, referred to as the Black Witch, runs the place like a heartless tyrant. Her husband, Clyde, plays second fiddle to her but enjoys the power she has over people. Her enforcer is Vincent DiMarco, who is sadistic in his treatment of the kids. The troublemakers, often including the brothers, are sent off to do backbreaking work in local farms which pay the Black Witch for the labor. Odie keeps trying to figure out what “training” the school is giving them. His conclusion was, “We didn’t learn anything except that we’d rather be dead than farmers.”
The students are forced to go to church and hear preaching about how sinful they are. As Odie reflects, most of the kids there “were just lost and trying their best to survive Lincoln School and stumble toward what their lives would be afterward.”
It’s not all bad. The local scoutmaster made being in the Boy Scouts enjoyable and taught the kids lots of practical skills. That didn’t last. He was transferred away from his banking job because he wouldn’t foreclose on farmers who were behind on their payments. The bank didn’t care that it was a depression.
Odie had a habit of pushing back against unfair treatment and was often sent off to solitary confinement – the quiet room. There his best friend was a rat that he named Faria that he fed with whatever scraps he could steal. One of the saddest parts of the book is when the rat dies peacefully and Odie is distraught. They had been buddies for almost four years, a long time for a rat to live.
Odie is a skilled harmonica player. There are good people who work at the school and help the kids, and Odie likes to play tunes for them. Throughout the book, Odie’s talent comes in handy as he defuses tense situations with song and also picks up his friends’ spirits during tough times. He plays at church services and special occasions. He’s really good.
DiMarco enjoyed seeing Odie whipped for breaking the rules and really hated the kid. One night he lured Odie out to a high river bank by saying that they were looking for a runaway. DiMarco then bragged about killing Billy, a new Indian kid who broke the rules by sometimes speaking his native language. Odie was next, but he fought back, and DiMarco ended up dead in the river.
Odie figures that no one will believe what really happened so it’s time for the two brothers to leave. Two others join them. Emmy had lived near the school on a small farm. She lost her father the year before, and her mother, who had been very kind to the brothers, had just been killed by a recent tornado. The Black Witch wants to keep Emmy, but Emmy doesn’t want that and is determined to leave. Mose is a big Sioux teen, who is mute because someone cut out his tongue when he was four years old. No one is quite sure why. He is picked on mercilessly by students and staff so he wants out. Odie and Albert had learned sign language from their grandmother who had lost her voice due to measles. The two brothers taught Mose how to sign.
Right before they make their getaway, Mrs. Brickman takes Odie’s harmonica away as a punishment. He needs to get it before he leaves. He and his brother know that the Black Witch is away on business so they break into the house and confront Mr. Brickman, demanding the harmonica. He’s in bed with one of the teachers. They strike a deal. No one has to know about his girlfriend if he gives them the harmonica. He opens the safe and the boys grab the instrument, a pistol, and a burlap bag with money and letters in it.
The four kids know that they can’t get away on foot so they go to Emmy’s old house and take the canoe and head off. The book is the story of their journey to different places and people. The school is located on the Gilead River, which connects to the Minnesota River, which feeds the Mississippi River that can take you anywhere. The first night they paddled by moonglow, with the banks of the river illuminated by many campfires of people trying to get through the Great Depression, although no one called it that then.
Odie was happy. “The air I breathed felt cleaner than any I’d breathed before. The white satin ribbon that was the moonlit river and the silvered cottonwoods and the black velvet sky with its millions of diamonds seemed to me the most beautiful things I’d ever seen.”
They look at what’s in the burlap bag that they had liberated from the Brickman's house and find hundreds of dollars and letters from family members of students at the school asking that the enclosed money be used to help their child. The Brickman’s kept the cash and ignored the wishes of the letter writers. Odie saw letters from relatives of his friends who asked that the enclosed money be used for a birthday or Christmas present. It never was.
The brothers camp near a town and go off to buy boots to replace the cardboard “Hoover shoes” they’re wearing. Emmy’s disappearance – called a kidnapping – made the front page of the local paper. People would be on the lookout for the missing 6-year old so they had to be careful as they traveled.
There are lots of nice little touches in the book. Odie makes Emmy a sock puppet to make up for the real doll that she lost while leaving with the boys. Odie sees two worn shirts on a clothesline and takes them down, leaving a lot of money behind to pay for them, money he knows the owners of the shirts can use. Emmy has vivid dreams at night, and the crew comforts her until she calms down and goes back to a peaceful sleep. She has become their little sister.
On a farm they find a shed that they bed down in during a driving rain. In the morning, the farmer finds them and essentially imprisons them and makes them do farm chores. He also takes the burlap bag with the letters and the money. They stay with the pig scarer - that’s what he looks like - for a time. After a few days, he becomes a bit nicer to them but they still can’t go anywhere on their own. It turns out that the farmer - his name is Jack - has his own demons. His wife and child recently died tragically, and he lost his best friend in World War II. Jack had his leg badly damaged in the war, and he feels guilty that he survived while his friend, Rudy, didn’t. He drinks a lot to forget. Albert, who is very handy, builds their captor a distillery to make moonshine. Relations improve since their captor has free booze now. Some nights Jack accompanies Odie’s harmonica playing with his fiddle and things are almost good, but there is always an edge of menace in the situation.
One night, Jack drinks too much and has a bad PTSD flashback. He develops “a monstrous rage” and he threatens to kill Albert and Emmy, at which point Odie sneaks out and gets the pistol that he had hidden and shoots their host who drops like a rock. Albert looks down at the body and decides that it’s time to move on.
This is the second death involving Odie. He has no doubt that DiMarco would have killed him during their confrontation above the river so that doesn't bother him. He does feel remorse for shooting the pig scarer but he was sure that Emmy and Albert were in imminent danger before he pulled the trigger. Still, he’s beginning to think that somehow, he attracts trouble.
It’s been only ten days since they left the school. They see a local paper with a front-page story about DiMarco’s murder so it’s only a matter of time until people start looking for the kids who ran away that night. The canoe travelers are beginning to realize how hard their journey will be to get to a place where they’ll be safe and secure and welcome. Emmy and Mose get a bit down now and then. Odie starts playing his harmonica and spirits lift, at least for a while.
They make camp one night and are visited by a tall Indian, Forrest, who brings them fresh catfish which they fry and eat. He and Mose get along well; being Indians bonds them. Forrest tells them that there’s a $500 reward on their heads for kidnapping Emmy, which they didn’t do but they are with her. Odie plays some tunes and they’re off to sleep.
In the middle of the night, Albert wakes the crew and they sneak off in the canoe. He had seen something in Forrest’s gear indicating that he had been in touch with the Brickmans and was going to turn the kids in for the money. Off they go.
While paddling, Odie and Albert look through the burlap bag and pull out random letters that contained money for students at the school. One of the letters is from their Aunt Julia and directs the Brickmans to buy them and birthday presents. That never happened, but the boys now have a final destination – St. Louis, which is on the Mississippi River and is home to the only relative they know, Julia, their mother’s sister. Her address was on the envelope.
The good news is that they left the Gilead River where they started and are now on the Minnesota River heading to the Mississippi. The bad news is that they have no food or money and are wanted by the police.
Their next stop is to check out what’s making beautiful music along the shore. It’s a traveling religious revival troupe. The Vagabonds, as they call themselves, head into the tent and see a woman in a white robe with a large cross talking to a young man who is crippled. He’s asking for a miracle and she’s trying to work one. She tells the man that miracles are up to God and that, if he believes, he may find his miracle. Four drunks come in now and start to ridicule her. She approaches one and tells him that he’s living with guilt about the death of his mother in a fire. He gasps as she says it wasn’t his fault. He calms down and he and his friends go off peacefully. After the service, Odie and his companions have a good meal and bed down for the night. Odie hears music and looks into a big tent to see the preacher woman wearing regular clothes and cowboy boots and singing Gershwin songs. He goes back to bed.
One of the themes of the book is the role of religion and belief in our lives. Sister Eve, the preacher, has a reputation for healing people. It’s not clear that she has ever healed anyone, but she does make people believe that they can get better if they have faith in God and themselves. Sometimes they do heal physically and sometimes it’s more of an emotional patch. Odie goes back and forth, wondering if she’s a complete fraud or if there’s something more there.
The next day the kids walk to town in New Bremen, Minnesota, and see Sister Eve at the drugstore. They strike up a conversation and Eve buys candy for everyone. Albert is nervous about being caught so he wants to leave, but Emmy wants to stay so they do. They go to that night’s service and cynical Odie gets caught up in the old-time gospel music. A big man walks up to the stage and demands that Eve bring back his wife who died. He might have killed her inadvertently. She speaks calmly to him but he goes nuts and brings out a shotgun aimed at Eve. Emmy tells Odie to start playing something nice so he does Beautiful Dreamer, at which point the guy breaks down and cries. That was his wife’s favorite song. All is well. Odie’s music saved the day.
Eve invites the kids to travel with the revival to their final destination, St. Louis. Odie and Albert are wary but Mose and Emmy are all in.
Each night different people come to the show, some to be healed, some to sing and hear Sister Eve. Her workers are a motley crew, often damaged by life or wanted by the law. She stays in one place for a week or so and moves on. While she’s there she lends out her workers to local people who need help with chores and such. Albert wants to move on before they get caught by the authorities but Mose and Emmy like the Gideon Revival, as it’s called. Odie likes it well enough but he knows good things can’t last and he’s suspicious of Eve’s curing powers.
Sid is the business manager of the operation. He doesn't want the four kids around and is nasty to Odie. One day Odie hides in the back seat of Sid’s car and goes into town with him. He sees Sid paying off several people who came to the revival looking to be cured who were cured. Odie has his proof that Eve is a fraud. He also finds a syringe and clear liquid in Sid’s car, which is proof that Sid uses heroin. Odie takes the drug kit to Albert and he gets rid of it.
When Odie gets back he calls a meeting of the group and explains what he saw, that Eve is a fake. The other three are surprised and ask Odie to at least talk to Eve before passing judgment. The four of them talk to Eve and she doesn’t give them a straight answer. She says that she can’t cure anyone; that’s God’s work. She can just give people hope and increase their faith in God and themselves, which can be enough for good things to happen. She has witnessed people being cured, again with Eve just being a conduit to a higher power.
Odie is not buying it. He gets angry and grabs a snake out of the terrarium and shoves it towards her. The snake gets away and bites Albert in the leg. This snake does have venom. Eve asks Sid to get the snake bite kit but Albert had gotten rid of it thinking it was heroin.
Albert is dying. The doctor comes but can’t do much but try to drain the venom. Finally, they get a snakebite kit from another town, but it looks like it’s too late. They inject Albert who continues to fade. Odie asks Eve to prove she’s for real by curing Albert. She says she doesn’t cure – that’s above her station in life – but that she’ll work on it if Odie truly believes that Albert will come through. That means that Odie has to have faith, something he’s short on.
Odie has a complicated relationship with the Almighty. Earlier in his life, he liked church. As time went on, his father was murdered in cold blood, and a few years later his mother died from a terrible disease. He and Albert were sent to the awful Lincoln Training School. Albert and he found peace with Emmy’s mom, Cora, but she was killed by a tornado. Odie now believes in a Tornado God, not a Benevolent God. Believing that some supreme power will help Albert recover from the snake bite is a stretch for him. On the other hand, there were caring people at the school, and the four canoeists were helped along their journey by a lot of strangers. Maybe there’s something to this God-is-good stuff.
Just when things look awful, Albert wakes up and does recover, although he limps for the rest of his life. The doctor who treated him says that he should be dead. The anti-venom serum was injected way too late to do any good, but it worked. He doesn’t call it a miracle but it’s clear that’s what he thinks it was.
Now Eve explains more to Odie. The money he saw Sid give people was their pay. They were helped by the revival - by God, not Eve - and sometimes they would come back and reenact the cure. She admits that it’s a bit deceptive but these were real cures. It helps business and it helps people in the audience believe that they can be helped or help themselves.
Eve talks about her life. Her father was abusive. One night he killed her mother and cracked Eve’s head and face with a big clay jug, knocking her out for a long time and leaving a scar on her face. When she finally woke up, she had a special sense that she could understand people and their problems and perhaps help them find peace and hope in their lives. She started the revival.
Just when things are calming down, the local paper ran a front-page picture of Albert who miraculously recovered from what should have been a fatal snake bite. Odie and crew see the Sheriff and the Brickmans in town asking about the three kids who kidnapped the little girl, Emmy. Time to move on.
They canoe down the Minnesota River and stop at various places to sleep and get supplies with the money Sister Eve gave them. Odie buys a local paper and sees that they are wanted for kidnapping Emmy, a federal crime. Odie and Albert are a threat to the Brickmans and the sheriff because of the ledger that was in the burlap bag that Odie took from the Brickman's safe. It details payoffs to public officials throughout the county. If that goes public, a lot of people go to prison.
Along the way they find a skeleton of an Indian kid. Emmy, who has some kind of a gift for seeing things that no one else does, sees that many Indians died here. That sends Mose, a Sioux, into a funk.
They move on. After a stop, Odie walks to the nearby town where a lot of poor people who have formed a community of sorts, a Hooverville, as they were called. This one is called Hoperville by the people who live there. Residents used to be successful farmers and businessmen but the Depression destroyed them. Odie goes back to where his friends were but they’re gone. He goes back to Hoperville and makes friends with people and gets a meal. Mother Beal is in charge and he tells her that he is on his way to St. Louis. His harmonica skills come in handy here. At a gathering, he plays his favorite song, Shenandoah, and it connects with the audience.
Odie meets and is smitten by Maybeth Schofield, a girl about his age. Her family lost the farm because of her father’s drinking, which is still a problem and causing stress. The family is trying to get to family in Chicago, but Dad uses whatever money they have to drink. Despite Maybeth’s problems, she is an optimist who is sure things will get better. Not Odie, who broods on the fact that he killed two people, lost Emmy, Mose and Albert, and has no money to go anywhere. They develop a relationship of sorts, but Odie has to find his friends.
Once again, the police come to the camp, looking for someone. Odie assumes the worst and runs off again. He literally runs into Forrest, the Indian that Albert said was going to turn them in. That was wrong. Forrest, also known by his Sioux name, Hawk Flies at Night, is a good guy who is helping the group. He was out looking for Odie and brought him back to their camp where he is reunited with his friends. It turns out that the police are looking for an escaped mental patient, not the canoe crew.
Mose is still in a funk and goes off on his own to find himself. Albert, a born cynic, has become trusting of people. Odie, who worries about everything, is infatuated with Maybeth and happy. Emmy is developing a sixth sense about things that will happen. They’ve all come a long way after a month on the river, and they’ve bonded as a family.
Odie convinces Albert to go back with him to Hoperville to fix Maybeth’s family’s truck so that they can go to Chicago. Odie sees Maybeth’s dad and gives him the $40 he has to pay for gas to get to Chicago. Odie’s afraid that Mr. Schofield will drink it away, but he doesn’t. He says that he’s done drinking now that he can get his family to Chicago. That transformation is the miracle that Maybeth believed in. The next day the Schofields head off to their new life. Odie is heartbroken to lose Maybeth but she gives him her address in Chicago and he promises to write to her.
Mose returns to the camp but is still in a foul mood. He learned about how 38 Indians were hung 50 years ago near where they are in Minnesota. He is bitter, but over the next few days he comes out of his funk.
The Brickmans and the sheriff have tracked them down again, so the canoe group is off once more. They get to St. Paul and finally see the Mississippi River that will take them to St. Louis. Forrest, who did not come with them, gave Albert a note with the name of a woman who would help them out. They go to the West Side Flats, a shanty town on the river, and they find Gertie Hellman, who’s in charge of everything. She hires the boys to do odd jobs and feeds everyone. Once again, good people are helping Odie and his friends just when they most need it. Odie and his friend John hop off and on freight cars for fun and Odie gets to be a 12-year old again.
Odie goes back to the West Flats and runs into a person he thought he had killed: Jack, the pig scarer that he shot a few weeks ago. It turns out that the bullet did not kill Jack; it saved him. He woke up and got a doctor to fix the wound, which just missed his heart. Given a second chance, Jack turned his life around. He stopped drinking and reconnected with his family that he had ignored for years. Jack believes that Odie saved him.
Odie wants to take off again. He figures that It’s just a matter of time until the Brickmans track them down again. The rest of the crew wants to stay at the Flats. Albert can fix anything and the local mechanic offers him a good job. Emmy and Mose like the people and the overall feel of the neighborhood. There are quite a few Indians there, which is good for Mose. They’re staying. Odie has a bad feeling about sticking around and decides to go to St. Louis by himself.
Odie can’t handle the canoe by himself so he hops a southbound freight train which gets him to St. Louis a few days later. He left at night and told his friend, John, not to tell Albert and the others what he was doing. He goes to the address of his Aunt Julia, which is a nice big house on Ithaca Street in a good neighborhood. Julia is very surprised to see him; the last time he visited he was six years old. She addressed him by his given name: Odysseus.
She gives Odie a room in the attic. It turns out that Aunt Julia is a madam who runs a classy brothel. Initially she keeps that from Odie, but he makes friends with one of the girls who is in her late teens. She explains what goes on in the house.
Odie tells Julia his life story, especially what’s gone on since he ran away from the Lincoln School. She is moved by what he’s gone through in the six years since she last saw him.
Odie goes for a walk and sees a sign for the Gideon Revival which finally made it to St. Louis. He looks up Sister Eve and complains to her that Aunt Julia is not what he had imagined her to be. He’s not happy that she runs a brothel and that she stuck him in the attic. Eve reminds Odie that he reached his goal of reuniting with Julia and that maybe he should be a bit more forgiving of her. He's not there yet. He doesn't want to live in that house. Eve tells him that he is welcome to go with the revival. He accepts.
Eve wants to know how everyone else is doing, especially Emmy. Eve has a gift for seeing the past, especially looking at people and seeing what damaged them. She tells Odie that Emmy has a gift for seeing bits of the future and affecting what happens. Emmy is why Jack didn't die when Odie shot him. Emmy also probably saved Albert’s life when he should have died from the snake bite. Emmy’s dreams often portend something that is going to happen. When Eve held Emmy’s hand it was like looking at a foggy future that Emmy was seeing more clearly.
Eve calmed Odie down. He has forgiven Julia for not being what he wanted her to be.
The Reveal Odie sits down with Julia to tell her that he will be going with the revival. Before he begins, she shows him pictures of him at various times in his early life. She reveals that she named him after Homer’s epic that she and her sister, Rosalee really enjoyed. It turns out that Julia is Odie’s mother.
Julia understands that Odie must go, although he’s beginning to think that maybe he and his mother can have a future together. At this tender moment, the Brickmans show up, with the Black Witch. (Her real name is Thelma. Black Witch is much cooler.) She demands to know where Emmy is. Mrs. Brickman has figured out that Emmy has a gift that she wants to exploit. Odie will not reveal where Emmy is and rushes the Black Witch who has pulled out a pistol which she fires into Odie’s leg. Julia rushes the Witch and they tumble out of the window.
Mrs. Brickman dies but Julia lives, although she is paralyzed. She gets out of the brothel business and starts designing clothes, which she does very well. Odie lives with Julia, and Emmy goes with Eve and the Gideon Revival. Clyde Brickman, the Black Witch's husband, is convicted of many crimes relating to bribery and extortion and dies in prison.
In the epilogue, we learn what happened. Albert became an engineer and was a World War II hero. Odie became a successful writer. He did marry Maybeth. Emmy and Eve used Emmy’s gift for good. Mose, who was a very good baseball player at the Lincoln School, played for the St. Louis Cardinals for a few years until an eye injury put him out of the major leagues. He went back to Lincoln School under new, much better management, and coached baseball and taught. He married an Indian girl he met at the school and became involved in Native American issues.
At the end of the book we learn that Odie and Emmy are the last ones living. They are like a brother and sister as they move along through life. The journey of the four orphans did create a real family.
Bob’s Take
This is a great book. It’s a nice change of pace from the non-fiction I usually read and summarize. William Kent Kreuger is a master writer who is at the top of his craft. His prose is exquisite and the characters are people you come to care about. While this is literary in the finest sense, it moves along and has a lot of mystery/suspense elements. Most of Kreuger’s books are mysteries of sorts involving Cork O’Connor, who lives in Northern Minnesota and works with Native Americans to figure out who did what. There is a spirituality to his books, often involving Indian culture. In This Tender Land, spirituality is more of an anchor to the story than in the Cork O’Connor books.
It’s The Odyssey, stupid! Once we realize that Odie’s real name is Odysseus (on page 410, 33 pages from the end), we get it. This story is inspired by Homer's Odyssey. Another clue is that Julia lives on Ithaca Street - Odysseus’s home and where Odie was born. The four orphans travel on rivers, which parallels Odysseus’s journey on seas. The kids face lots of adversity along their journey, just as the hero of Homer’s epic did.
Throughout the entire book, Odie is trying to get home. It took the original Odysseus ten years to get there. It took Odie only two months in the summer of 1932. At the end of the tale, Odysseus must slay Penelope’s suitors and Odie initiates the action that led to the Black Witch’s death.
Faith, Hope, Redemption. This book isn’t about religion but it is about spirituality. Faith is a major element. Odie and Albert run away from the Lincoln School not trusting anyone. During their journey, they come to rely on and trust many people. Random strangers step up to help them. They come to trust Forrest, the Indian Albert thought would turn them in. They ultimately put their complete trust in Sister Eve and Mother Beal and Gertie Hellman who’s in charge of the Flats. Odie trusts that Maybeth’s father will use the money that Odie gave him to get his family to Chicago.
Julia redeems herself with Odie by attacking Thelma Brickman to save Odie. Jack, the pig scarer, redeems himself after almost being killed by Odie. Mose goes through a heavy depression but comes out a new man.
Kreuger fuses various notions of God into the writing: “There is a river that runs through time and the universe, vast and inexplicable, a flow of spirits that is at the heart of all existence, and every molecule of our being is a part of it. And what is God but the whole of that river?”
Jack, the reformed pig scarer, sums life up nicely: “Never was a churchgoer. God all penned up under a roof? I don’t think so. Ask me, God’s right here. In the dirt, the rain, the sky, the trees, the apples, the stars in the cottonwoods. In you and me, too. It’s all connected and it’s all God. Sure, this is hard work, but it’s good work because it’s a part of what connects us to the land. This beautiful tender land.”
Similar books. This Tender Land obviously is modeled on Homer’s Odyssey but it also resonates with other books.
