Greetings! Last month I read several books, but the one I will review is This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger. This was a book selected by a member of the book club I attend. At 444 pages in the paperback edition, this was not a book I read from start to finish in one day. The book is about four orphans and has a setting in the Midwest around 1932. Odie, Moses, Emmy, and Albert are the four orphans who originally meet at an orphanage called the Lincoln School. The school is for children of Native American descent who have lost their parents. The school is owned and managed by a couple named The Brickmans. Mrs. Brickman is the founder/principal of the school. No one likes Mrs. Brickman and Odie calls her a witch because she is constantly reprimanding him and sending him to sleep in a basement cell.
Albert is initially revealed to be Odie's brother who is generally never in trouble with Mrs. Brickman; however, he is a wiz at mechanics as he is called upon numerous times to fix any appliance, boat, fence, or distillery. Emmy is the daughter of one of the teachers at the school named Cora Frost. Moses is an oprhan of Sioux descent who uses a form of sign language to communicate as when his parents were killed, someone cut out a portion of his tongue so he could never tell anyone who committed the crime.
Emmy's mom is killed in a tornado right before she had planned to adopt the three boys from Lincoln School so they could help her tend her land and garden as she lost her husband. Once the tornado passes, the three boys go look for Emmy and her mom. They find Emmy in an underground cellar, but there is no sign of her mother until one boy discovers her body under mounds of debris. That is when Odie, Albert, and Moses decide to run away from Lincoln School and take Emmy with them since she has lost both parents and the Brickmans want to adopt Emmy. The kids utilize a canoe that belonged to Emmy's father to make their way to the Mississippi river. Albert and Odie want to make it to St. Louis where they have an aunt named Julia who they believe will allow them to live with her.
Along the way, they meet a whole host of entertaining characters who present challenges to them and some who try to help them along their way to St. Louis. They come upon Jack, a man who has a farm and has lost his wife and child as they left him due to his drinking and volatile behavior. He uses the boys to work on his farm and has Emmy help make food. When Odie discovers Jack has stolen their money sack and could potentially hurt Emmy, the boys turn on Jack and are able to escape a bad situation. They next meet a man named Forrest who is descended from the Sioux tribe and is traveling while looking for work. The boys think Forrest is there to turn them in to the authorities and collect the reward money that is being offered for capture of both Emmy and all three boys. They get away from him easily.
The next folks they meet are a part of a traveling religious crusade. This is where they meet Sister Evie, who leads the evening worship services and performs miraculous acts of healing. Sister Evie takes in Odie and Emmy and Moses works and resides with the kitchen folks while Albert works and resides with the carpentry/maintenance crew that travels with the crusade. Odie observes Sid, Sister Evie's publicity manager, pay off folks who were healed at many of the evening services and Odie also finds evidence he believes points to Sid being a bootlegger and drug dealer. When Albert gets bit by a venomous snake used in the religious crusade evening services, he is taken to a local doctor. Sid goes to retrieve his anti-venom vials and that is when the kids learn Sid was not into drugs. The vials Odie found were anti-venom medications which Odie had already destroyed as he thought they were dope. Albert struggles to overcome the snake bite until someone can get the proper meds to help him recover.
When Odie decides the group should leave the traveling religious crusade, Sister Evie entrusts him with $50 and a sack full of food as the kids continue on their trip. The boys then keep traveling via the canoe. They notice that when Emmy sleeps, she has seizures or fits. Emmy never remembers anything from the fits, but she generally will awake for a moment and tell them something that foretells a future event the group will encounter. Interestingly, they run into the Sioux Indian named Forrest once again who helps Moses learn about his Sioux heritage while the group takes a break along their trip in a place Odie refers to as Hopersville. Odie meets another family called The Schofields living in a tent city and develops his first love with the couple's daughter, Maybeth. When the Schofields leave tent city, Odie opts to give the family all the remaining money his group has. This does not go over well with Odie's compatriots, especially Albert.
Finally, the group makes it to St. Paul where the kids look for a person named Gertie who Forrest said could help them for a few days along their trip. Gertie lives in a shantytown and runs a restaurant with a woman named Flo. The kids stay with Gertie and Odie, Emmy, and Moses help run the restaurant while Albert tries to help Flo's brother fix the engine of his broken boat. Odie makes friends with a local kid who teaches him how to jump onto and ride the train cars. And eventually, Odie realizes he must leave the group since they appear to want to stay with Gertie. Odie journeys on a rail car until he finally reaches St. Louis and finds Aunt Julia. I will stop with the summary here because I do not want to give away the multitude of surprises at the end of this well-written book.
In my opinion, this book brought to mind two themes: family and friendships. In terms of family, it made me think of who do I define as family? What is my own heritage? When I think of home I think of my parents' home and my immediate family, but for the orphans in this book, they essentially made their own family by choosing to be friends and look out for one another. And in terms of friendship, I think friends are like the family members you choose to have. People who are not necessarily related via blood, but sometimes you have just as strong a tie with a friend as you would an immediate family member. In many respects, sometimes a person has a stronger bond with a friend than they may have with any single blood-related family member. And of course, family and friends are the people who know you best. They can be the ones who are there for you in tough times and they can be the exact people who also know how to push your buttons.
Additionally, I saw glimpses of the theme of good vs. evil in this book many times. And I felt this book demonstrated how people who have been helped by someone they least expected to help them sometimes "pay it forward" and help someone they barely know. And in the character Odie, I saw myself in that in a perilous situation, Odie often assumes the worst about a person and then later learns the person or their habits were not as bad as he originally assumed them to be. And in the character Moses, I thought a lot about the Native American population and the horrors they experienced throughout history and today. And in one couple in this book, I was surprised to read the author's inference that they were LGBTQ and yet, the whole community surrounding them accepted them and treated them just like family. This was a truly good book and the character development by the author was just stellar. Some folks from the book club felt this book reminded them of The Wizard of Oz and Huckleberry Finn. I would advise you to read the book and determine for yourself what themes or lessons you glean from the book.
Until my next review,
Grace
(Amy)
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