This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger

Don't you just love reading a novel where the author's humanity so clearly shines through the pages? I felt overwhelmed by this phenomenon while reading Leif Enger's "Peace Like a River" and "Virgil Wander" and it settled upon me again while I was enthralled by "This Tender Land." Kreuger is a prolific writer so I have no excuse for telling you that this is the first novel of his that I've read. It will not be the last.

Our narrator tells us in the prologue that he is a storyteller, that this is a divine gift with which he entertains his family, in particular, his grandchildren. Readers will continue to return to this prologue to reassure themselves that the narrator, Odie O'Banion, does live to share his amazing tale with us. It has been compared to Huck Finn's days on the river but for me it seemed much more momentous, almost Odyssean.

Odie and his older brother Albert were orphaned in the early 1930's and sent to live at a boarding school in northern Minnesota, a school specifically designed for the "Americanization" of Native tribal children. In Dickensian style the school is run by a childless, heartless woman, aptly named Thelma Brickman.  The pupils learn little and suffer mightily, especially if, like Odie, they stand out from the crowd for their wit or spunk.

I don't want to and couldn't possibly relate the entire gloriously convoluted plot to you. What I will say is that to escape physical and sexual abuse and the fear of being blamed for the death of a student, Odie and Albert devise an escape plan that includes a mute Indian boy named Moshe and Emmy, an orphaned toddler imbued with a surreal wisdom beyond her years. They are the most wonderful company!

Krueger's love of the natural world graces every page of the motley crew's adventures as they canoe down the Gilead River on their way to the great Mississippi and potentially salvation in the form of a distant aunt of the brothers whose last known address was St. Louis. Take a look at a map as I did and just imagine these children with little but the clothes on their backs and hearts full of hope as they elude false newspaper accounts of their circumstances and bounty hunters hungry for a reward. We are in the middle of the great depression after all, the dust bowl era, a time when even a decent person might be tempted to sell out the kids for a bowl of soup.

The children will encounter the best and the worst that humanity has to offer, a traveling revival show and a lonely, desperate man willing to enslave them just for their company. They will misplace their trust in eachother and others yet discover deep wells of goodness in their fellow man. Moshe will learn of the horrors visited upon his native ancestors, falling into a pit of despair. Albert will fight the need to simply walk away from the burden of the group and Odie will commit a crime that will haunt him, forcing a reckoning with his belief in God, love, and forgiveness. 

Examining the meaning of life through the lives of four children on a quest for what each might call home, William Kent Krueger tenderly tells a universal story in luminous, languid prose, gently teasing out the best in even the worst of villains. This novel is so full of heart, such a lovely antidote to the anxiety inducing tweets and posts of the digital world. As Odie tells us in his prologue, "Things were different then. Not simpler or better, just different." William Kent Krueger's words are a balm for the soul.