Book Review: This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger

This Tender Land
by William Kent Krueger

“Does anyone ever get used to having their heart broken?”

Minnesota author William Kent Krueger offers up a powerful look at faith – both that forced by rote and that earned by life’s experiences, and what makes a family truly a family, with this tale of four youth on the run, looking for where they can be safe, and trying to survive in the Depression-era Midwest.

Storyteller Odysseus “Odie” O’Banion is the pre-teen narrator of this coming-of-age story. It starts in the brutal world of an Indian School in Minnesota, where Odie and his older brother Albert are the only two Caucasians in a school for Indian youth – the purpose of which is to remove all traces of the students’ Indian-ness. Dangerous circumstances force the brothers to flee from the school, with an Indian youth who can only speak in sign language, and a 6-year-old orphan girl they are protecting. Taking a canoe, the foursome plans to journey by river from Minnesota to St. Louis, MO, where the potential promise of a distant relative seems to offer them hope.

Much like the rivers they float upon, this story meanders along a slow but steady path, as the foursome encounter a rogue’s gallery of colorful supporting characters – including a one-eyed farmer who holds them captive for forced labor, a Native American bounty hunter, train-hopping hobos, a homeless camp of Depression victims, a kindly family of ghetto-ized Jews in a shantytown by St. Paul, a boardinghouse owner offering room and food, and a faith healer who may or may not actually have miraculous powers.

This story is part Grapes of Wrath, and part Huckleberry Finn, and is essentially an updating of Homer’s The Odyssey in a more modern setting. In addition to his long-running Cork O’Connor series, Krueger is best known for his previous stand-alone novel, Ordinary Grace (2013). This Tender Land was originally to have been a companion volume to Ordinary Grace, but Krueger was unsatisfied with his finished novel, and shelved that, focusing all his creative energy on This Tender Land instead.

This novel is filled with fascinating and well-drawn characters. It contrasts youthful innocence and wonder, against the harsh realities of life and cruelties of average ordinary humans – all set in a time and placed filled with crushing poverty and the sense of loss that permeated the Great Depression. This Tender Land ultimately reveals the power and impact that kindness and compassion can have when employed by honest characters.

[ official This Tender Land page on the official This Tender Land web site ]

See also: Jodi R.’s recent review of This Tender Land here on BookGuide in January 2020

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library – Public Service

This Tender Land is one of the 2020 One Book - One Lincoln Top Ten finalists.

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A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression by Jane Ziegelman and Andrew Coe

A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression
by Jane Ziegelman & Andrew Coe [973.917 Zie]

Did you know: Bread lines existed in New York City long before the Depression; Spanish Rice doesn’t really have anything to do with Spain; Home Extension Agents in Iowa were all women prior to 1930; Spring Fever is an actual physical malady; “mystery” loaves made from assorted leftovers were a common food and budget stretcher long before the 1950s; Milkwheato, Milkoato and Milkorno were actual cereal products, first introduced in 1933?

Writing partners and spouses Coe and Ziegelman have served up an informative plateful of US food history with this look at the specific period of the 1930s and early 1940s and assorted points before and after. Sifting through what must have been a mountain of materials, they have come up with a readable dissection of the changing of American eating habits over time and what factors influenced it. Plus, there are a lot of culinary trivia tidbits thrown in.

Relief/Subsistence programs, whether local, state or national, were predicated on the assumption that they would meet _temporary_ needs. Due to the combination of bad weather, a stricken economy, and poor administration and/or structure of some programs in the between-the-wars era, these needs went on for years. People receiving food assistance had to deal with the stigma of dependency — embarrassment, restrictions that seemed arbitrary or severe, and the “depressing routine of organized charity”. At the same time, Home Economics, most of whose practitioners were women, came to the fore and was a boon to many of the challenges that so many people, especially housewives, were facing.

The authors, unavoidably, also touch on the politics of the times, from President Hoover’s penchant for having gourmet meals in the White House while hewing to a charity-begins-at-home conservatism in public, to Gen. MacArthur’s [yes, THAT Gen. MacArthur] forcible removal of the “Bonus Army” encampment of World War I veterans who had journeyed to Washington DC to request better aid. Interspersed throughout the narrative are song lyrics apropos to the times and situations detailed.
Over all, this is an educational and eye-opening examination of a pivotal period in our nation’s food and nutrition history as well as our general socio-economic-political past. “Eleven-cent cotton and forty-cent meat, How in the world can a poor man eat?”

[If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try The National Cookbook by Sheila Hibben (1932) — link connects to a digitized version of this classic cookbook online, and America Eats! : On the Road with the WPA : The Fish Fries, Box Supper Socials, and Chitlin Feasts That Define Real American Food (not currently in LCL — try our InterLibrary Loan service!)]

[ official A Square Meal web site ] | [ publisher’s official Jane Ziegelman web site ]

Recommended by Becky W.C.
Walt Branch Library

Have you read this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewers recommendations!