This Tender Land

Four years older than Odie, Albert is raised as his brother, though they later learn that they are cousins. Albert is tall, lean, and intelligent, and his skills and disposition complement Odie’s. Whereas Odie can act and entertain people, Albert excels intellectually and mechanically. His deepest desire, according to Sister Eve, is to protect Odie. Though Odie and Albert squabble from time to time, their relationship doesn’t come under any real strain until the later stages of the novel, when Odie fears that they are drifting apart.

Odie first perceives significant changes in Albert following his snakebite. Since the story is told from Odie’s perspective, it is difficult to distinguish Albert from Odie’s perception of him. In any case, Albert is the group’s undisputed leader until his snakebite, at which point Odie shoulders additional responsibility. Later, when Albert finds work that he enjoys repairing watercraft in St. Paul, Odie again fears that his relationship with Albert has been compromised, and he sets out alone, only to find himself missing Albert intensely. Albert’s reaffirmation at the novel’s close that he loves Odie as a brother marks the mending of a relationship that, in all probability, was only jeopardized in Odie’s mind.

Large in stature, Mose is characterized as a giant in Odie’s fictional retelling of their adventures. Sent to Lincoln School after his mother was killed and his tongue cut out at the age of four, Mose is neglected and doesn’t learn to sign until Odie and Albert arrive at the school and teach him. More than anyone else, Mose represents the heart of the wandering group, as when he is the first to accept Emmy’s request to leave Lincoln School with them.

Mose’s innately cheerful disposition gives way to bitterness midway through their journey when they discover the skeletal remains of a Native American youth who was apparently killed. As Mose learns more about past and present abuses of his people, he begins to distance himself from Odie and Albert, but they draw together again when Albert offers an apology. Like Moses, the biblical prophet from whom Mose received his Anglican name, since both were found among reeds, Mose is raised within a culture that oppresses his own, and, like Moses, Mose later comes to the defense of his people: The Epilogue informs us that Mose becomes an effective political advocate for the rights of Native American peoples. Though his tongue was cut out, he could not be silenced.