Author | William Kent Krueger |
---|---|
Genre | Historical fiction, Coming-of-age story |
Published | 2019 |
Publisher | Atria Books |
Pages | 464 |
ISBN | 1476749299 |
Website | This Tender Land |
This Tender Land is a book written by William Kent Krueger and published by Atria Books (now owned by Simon & Schuster [1] ) in September 2019. Krueger had written a companion novel to Ordinary Grace , that was accepted and revised, but he pulled it at the last minute and revised it substantially over the next four years, incorporating elements from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and the Odyssey . [2] [3] After these lengthy reviews, Krueger said "I am deeply in love with this book. I love it as much, if not more, than 'Ordinary Grace'." [2]
It tracks the adventures of 12-year-old Odysseus "Odie" O'Bannion, his older brother Albert, and two of their friends after they flee the brutality of the (fictional) Lincoln Indian School, and travel by canoe down the (fictional) Gilead, Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers in hopes of reuniting with their aunt in St. Louis.
In 1932, 12-year-old Odysseus "Odie" O'Bannion and his older brother Albert are the only two white children raised in the brutality of Lincoln Indian Training School in central Minnesota. The O'Bannions' best friend is Mose, a mute Sioux boy with a talent for baseball. After a tornado kills the only kind teacher, Cora, and Cora's husband, their orphaned daughter, Emmy, is adopted by Clyde and Thelma Brickman, the cruel principals of the Lincoln School. When Odie accidentally kills one of the school's brutal teachers, the three escape downriver in a canoe with Emmy, with the goal of arriving in St. Louis to stay with Albert and Odie's Aunt Julia.
The group is soon captured by Jack, a WWI veteran with a missing eye and scarred face which leads Odie to call him The Pig-scarer. Over several days, the children and Jack grow closer, and they help him build a still. But when Emmy accidentally drops Jack's liquor bottle and he threatens her, Odie shoots him in the chest with Clyde's gun.
Fleeing further down-river, the boys learn from news articles they are being accused of kidnapping Emmy and may be executed. Drawn by beautiful music and food, the children join a revival meeting of the Gideon Crusade, a snake-handling church led by Sister Eve, who performs faith healings. After Odie catches camp manager Sid paying off the recipients of "miraculous" healings, he confronts Sister Eve about her frauds. This startles Emmy, who accidentally releases rattlesnake Lucifer, who poisons Albert. As they wait for antivenom to arrive, Sister Eve explains that she had cured the actors once and let Sid convince her to hire them to "prime the pump" in new towns. The antivenom arrives just in time, but the story's publicity forces the children to flee again.
The children hide on an island near Mankato, Minnesota, discovering a murdered Indian child. This deeply disturbs Mose, who asks to be called by his Sioux name Amdacha (Broken-to-Pieces) from then on. Papers in the local library reveal his namesake great-uncle was killed in the mass execution there during the Dakota War of 1862. Odie gets lost in a Bonus Army riot. Following harmonica music to a local Hooverville, he joins the Schofields, an extended family of dispossessed Kansas farmers fleeing the Dust Bowl. The children eventually reunite, and Albert repairs the Schofields's car while Odie develops a romance with their girl Maybeth. He gives their alcoholic father gas money, and the groups separate.
The children reach Saint Paul, Minnesota, stay with lesbian restaurant owners Gertie and Flo in the Jewish ghetto, learn to hop freight, and go downtown with the intent of mailing a letter to Maybeth. Downtown, Odie is confronted by Jack, who survived the shot to his chest. Odie goes on alone, in increasing fear of being caught, but the other three children decide to stay in St. Paul.
Odie rides freight all the way to St. Louis, reaching Aunt Julia's house, only to gradually realize she is a madam and the house a brothel. Stunned, he wanders the huge St. Louis Hooverville until he stumbles across the Gideon Crusade, where Sister Eve encourages him to return to Julia. Doing so, Julia explains that she is actually Odie's mother. The Brickmans force their way into the room. It is revealed that Thelma Brickman, like Julia, was once a prostitute, and that she killed Odie's bootlegging father Zeke. She shoots and injures Odie. Julia throws herself on Thelma and both fall from the window, killing Thelma and paralyzing Julia.
In an epilogue, Odie says he eventually married Maybeth and tells this (embellished) story to their great-grandchildren. Clyde Brickman served life in prison; Albert died in World War II; "The Silent Sioux Slugger" Amdacha quit professional baseball to reform the Indian education system. He considers Emmy, the only other surviving vagabond, a sister.
Children traveling down midwestern American rivers to reunite with an aunt, pursued by unjust legal forces with racist overtones, is intended to be a modernized retelling of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn . Krueger has said this is how he originally envisioned the book, but it gained more influences during rewrites. [2]
The long water journey through many dangers is similar to the plot arc of the Odyssey . Odie got his name because he was born on Ithaca Street in St. Louis, both allusions to Homer's Odysseus, king of Ithaca. Odie's belief that he is cursed by a malevolent Tornado God is similar to the antagonistic relationship that Odysseus has to Poseidon. Albert's traveling pseudonym, Norman, explained in the text as coming from the 17-year-old being neither boy "nor man", is first told to the one-eyed veteran Jack, much the way Odysseus tells the cyclops Polyphemus his name is "Nobody". Odie is frequently drawn to other people by music, the way the sirens draw sailors with their songs. The section in which Odie spends time with the Schofield family and meets Maybeth Schofield is also similar to the time in the Odyssey spent on Calypso’s island, although the Schofields are less sinister. Upon arrival, Aunt Julie's brothel is unexpectedly full of rowdy men, the way Penelope's home has been invaded by unwanted suitors. Emmy's ability to see and manipulate the future resembles that of the Delphic Oracles. [4] [5]
The character of Sister Eve draws heavy inspiration for her complicated motivations from Sharon Falconer, the itinerant companion of Elmer in Sinclair Lewis's novel Elmer Gantry . Lewis's character in turn is inspired by the real-life Aimee Semple McPherson, whom Sid refers to (in text) as a role model for Sister Eve and the entire Gideon Crusade. [6]
In an epilogue to the Audible version of the book, Krueger says he drew inspiration from Charles Dickens's criticism of the severe British boarding school system to write about Lincoln Indian School. He also relied heavily on first person accounts of survivors of the system. [7]
The novel was Krueger's first stand-alone work since the Edgar Award-winning Ordinary Grace , made the New York Times Best Sellers List on the first week of release, and remained for three weeks. [8] Reviews were generally positive, [9] [10] and the novel was nominated for the 2020 Best Minnesota Novel/Short Story. [11]
In Greek mythology, Agamemnon was a king of Mycenae who commanded the Achaeans during the Trojan War. He was the son of King Atreus and Queen Aerope, the brother of Menelaus, the husband of Clytemnestra, and the father of Iphigenia, Iphianassa, Electra, Laodike, Orestes and Chrysothemis. Legends make him the king of Mycenae or Argos, thought to be different names for the same area. Agamemnon was killed upon his return from Troy by Clytemnestra, or in an older version of the story, by Clytemnestra's lover Aegisthus.
Circe is an enchantress and a minor goddess in ancient Greek mythology and religion. In most accounts, Circe is described as the daughter of the sun god Helios and the Oceanid nymph Perse. Circe was renowned for her vast knowledge of potions and herbs. Through the use of these and a magic wand or staff, she would transform her enemies, or those who offended her, into animals.
The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. Like the Iliad, the Odyssey is divided into 24 books. It follows the Greek hero Odysseus, king of Ithaca, and his journey home after the Trojan War. After the war, which lasted ten years, his journey from Troy to Ithaca, via Africa and southern Europe, lasted for ten additional years during which time he encountered many perils and all of his crewmates were killed. In his absence, Odysseus was assumed dead, and his wife Penelope and son Telemachus had to contend with a group of unruly suitors who were competing for Penelope's hand in marriage.
In Greek and Roman mythology, Odysseus, also known by the Latin variant Ulysses, is a legendary Greek king of Ithaca and the hero of Homer's epic poem the Odyssey. Odysseus also plays a key role in Homer's Iliad and other works in that same epic cycle.
The Trojan War was a legendary conflict in Greek mythology that took place around the 12th or 13th century BC. The war was waged by the Achaeans (Greeks) against the city of Troy after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus, king of Sparta. The war is one of the most important events in Greek mythology, and it has been narrated through many works of Greek literature, most notably Homer's Iliad. The core of the Iliad describes a period of four days and two nights in the tenth year of the decade-long siege of Troy; the Odyssey describes the journey home of Odysseus, one of the war's heroes. Other parts of the war are described in a cycle of epic poems, which have survived through fragments. Episodes from the war provided material for Greek tragedy and other works of Greek literature, and for Roman poets including Virgil and Ovid.
Where the Heart Is is a 2000 American romantic drama film directed by Matt Williams and starring Natalie Portman, Stockard Channing, Ashley Judd, and Joan Cusack with supporting roles by James Frain, Dylan Bruno, Keith David, and Sally Field. The screenplay, written by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, is based on the best-selling 1995 novel of the same name by Billie Letts. The film follows five years in the life of Novalee Nation, a pregnant 17-year-old who is abandoned by her boyfriend at a Walmart in a small Oklahoma town. She secretly moves into the store, where she eventually gives birth to her baby, which attracts media attention. With the help of friends, she makes a new life for herself in the town.
In Greek mythology, Leucothea, sometimes also called Leucothoe, was one of the aspects under which an ancient sea goddess was recognized, in this case as a transformed nymph.
Aeaea, Ææa or Eëä was a mythological island said to be the home of the goddess-sorceress Circe.
"Circe would fain have held me back in her halls, the guileful lady of Aeaea, yearning that I should be her husband"..
Ellen Foster is a 1987 novel by American novelist Kaye Gibbons. It was a selection of Oprah's Book Club in October 1997.
A Garfield Christmas Special is a 1987 American animated television special based on the Garfield comic strip, created by Jim Davis. It is directed by Phil Roman and stars Lorenzo Music as the voice of Garfield the house cat, as well as Thom Huge, Gregg Berger, Julie Payne, Pat Harrington Jr., David L. Lander and Pat Carroll. The special is about Garfield spending Christmas with the Arbuckle family on their farm, and discovering the true meaning of Christmas.
Deenie is a 1973 young adult novel written by Judy Blume.
The World's Desire is a fantasy novel first published in 1890 and written by H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang. It was published in paperback by Ballantine Books as the fortieth volume of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series in January 1972.
Betsy-Tacy (1940) is the first volume in the Betsy-Tacy series by Maud Hart Lovelace.
Betsy Was a Junior (1947) is the seventh volume in the Betsy-Tacy series by Maud Hart Lovelace. The story spans the title character's junior, or eleventh grade, year in high school. The book, along with the entire Betsy-Tacy and Deep Valley series, was republished in 2000 by HarperTrophy with a new cover art illustrated by Michael Koelsch.
The locations mentioned in the narratives of Odysseus's adventures have long been debated. Events in the main sequence of the Odyssey take place in the Peloponnese and in what are now called the Ionian Islands. There are also incidental mentions of Troy and its house, Phoenicia, Egypt, and Crete, which hint at a geographical knowledge equal to, or perhaps slightly more extensive than that of the Iliad. The places visited by Odysseus in his journey have been variously identified with locations in Greece, Italy, Tunisia, the Maltese archipelago, and the Iberian peninsula. However, scholars both ancient and modern are divided whether any of the places visited by Odysseus were real. Many ancient writers came down squarely on the skeptical side; Strabo reported what the great geographer Eratosthenes had said in the late 3rd century BC: "You will find the scene of Odysseus' wanderings when you find the cobbler who sewed up the bag of winds."
The Rules of Survival is a 2006 novel written by Nancy Werlin. It depicts the story of a boy and his two siblings trying to survive vicious emotional and physical abuse by their mother, Nikki. This book was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Award for Young People's Literature. It also received recognition as a 2007 Best Book for Young Adults from the American Library Association.
Homecoming is a 1981 young adult novel by American children's author Cynthia Voigt. It is the first of seven novels in the Tillerman Cycle. It was adapted into a television film.
William Kent Krueger is an American novelist and crime writer, best known for his series of novels featuring Cork O'Connor, which are set mainly in Minnesota. In 2005 and 2006, he won back-to-back Anthony Awards for best novel. In 2014, his stand-alone book Ordinary Grace won the Edgar Award for Best Novel of 2013. In 2019, This Tender Land was on the New York Times bestseller list for nearly six months.
Storm Warning is the ninth book in The 39 Clues series. It is written by Linda Sue Park and was released on May 25, 2010. The geographical coordinates that appear on the ship on the book's cover indicate a point about six kilometers southeast of Albert Town, Jamaica.
Guilty of Love is a 1920 American silent drama film directed by Harley Knoles and written by Rosina Henley who adapted the play by Avery Hopwood. The film stars Dorothy Dalton, Julia Hurley, Henry Carvill, Augusta Anderson, Edward Langford, and Charles Lane. The film was released on August 22, 1920, by Paramount Pictures.
{{cite book}}
: |website=
ignored (help)