This Tender Land

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2019

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Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

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Themes

The Suffering of Marginalized Groups

Krueger draws attention to the plight of vulnerable groups in society, including children, ethnic groups, and those in lower economic classes. After Odie tells the story about the windigo, Mose responds that “there are monsters and they eat the hearts of children” (31). Such monsters include those who, like DiMarco and the men at the rail yard, beat and molest children. It also includes those who, like Mrs. Brickman and her father before her, use children to profit financially. Other monsters prey not on children but on those of certain cultural or ethnic backgrounds. After Mose is shaken by the discovery of a skeleton belonging to a Native American youth, he makes a concentrated effort to learn about past injustices, including the execution of 38 Sioux men. Odie later finds evidence of prejudicial treatment of Jews living in St. Paul, including police brutality. There, he also becomes aware of the economic disparities that keep his newfound friends from enjoying indoor plumbing even as they face flooding, hunger, and other privations. Conditions are even worse in the multiple Hoovervilles through which he passes. The disadvantages associated with various identities are shown to multiply as they intersect, as in the case of the poor, orphaned, Native American children who attend Lincoln School.

In the face of such injustices, Krueger’s tone maintains a hopeful note. Herman Volz and Mrs. Frost counterbalance, to some extent, DiMarco and Mrs. Brickman’s malevolent influence at the school. Despite official efforts to stamp out Sioux culture, Mose finds a mentor who guides him to reconnect with his heritage, and he goes on to become an effective spokesperson for Indigenous peoples. Various characters who are not of Native American descent, including Jack and Mother Beal, express appreciation for Native American mythology and craftsmanship. In the poverty-stricken neighborhoods of St. Paul, Odie observes “two things that had been withheld from us at Lincoln School: happiness and freedom” (351). Captain Gray changes the name of the shantytown where Odie meets the Schofields from Hooverville to Hopersville. In these and other ways, Krueger presents a world in which the possibility of change is worth pursuing. Among the changes Odie undergoes through his journey are his awakening to the presence of suffering all around, as well as the possibility of leveraging personal gifts—including his aptitude for music and storytelling, Albert’s intelligence, Mose’s heart, and Emmy’s clairvoyance—to relieve suffering.

The Search for Meaning

Odie’s physical journey from fictional Fremont County, Minnesota, to St. Louis, Missouri, provides the backdrop to a significant metaphysical journey as he tries to make sense of life. Though Odie is not particularly religious, he uses various conceptions of God as a framework for conceptualizing his place in the universe.

Odie passes through several stages on his way to arriving at a comprehensive outlook. The first of these, subsequent to the naïve outlook of his childhood, consists of fear and anger. Following the death of Mrs. Frost during a tornado, Odie comes to think of God as a tornado: powerful and indiscriminately destructive. This belief provides Odie with an outlet for his anger, allowing him to center blame in an external entity, but it also feeds into additional anger and cynicism. His mistrust of God is compounded when Albert turns a traditional biblical metaphor of God as a shepherd into a menacing one by pointing out that shepherds eat their sheep. Odie’s views are further reinforced when he meets Jack, in whom Odie finds an embodiment of the Tornado God’s volatility: “[Jack] was just like this land he loved, killer tornado one minute, blue sky the next” (131).

Odie’s encounter with the Sword of Gideon Healing Crusade causes him to reconsider his views. Sister Eve teaches that a loving God heals those who believe, and Odie counts himself among the believers—for a time. When he learns that Sid pays those who appear in Sister Eve’s show, Odie relinquishes belief for skepticism. Only when Albert suffers a life-threatening injury does Odie begin to recover a desire to believe. Following Albert’s recovery, Odie absorbs Mose’s reflection, “I know love. So if it’s true, like Sister Eve says, that God is love, then I guess I believe” (248). Odie recognizes his view of God as a tornado to be incomplete. By the time Odie arrives in St. Paul, his confusion has multiplied: “I didn’t believe in one god, I decided. I believed in many, all at war with one another” (367).

Odie’s search for meaning comes to a climax in the novel’s closing chapters. In some ways, his search for God is analogous to his search for home, which Sister Eve identifies as his fundamental desire. When Odie meets Julia, he considers her with the same dualistic thinking with which he conceives of a higher power. He confesses his disappointment to Sister Eve, who asks, “What did you imagine? That she would be a saint and take you in?” before suggesting that Julia may require Odie’s forgiveness (422). Just as Odie finds it necessary to accept Julia in all her ambiguity, so, too, the narrator suggests in the Epilogue that any meaningful conception of God must be broad enough to encompass both love and destruction.

The Power of Telling Stories

The tale of Odie’s adventures during the summer of 1932 is framed by Odie’s reflections as an elderly narrator, who comments on the value of telling stories. In the Prologue, the narrator suggests that stories are a gift from God, a reminder of beauty’s “divine source.” In response to his great-grandchildren’s playful accusation that he is a “liar,” he clarifies that he considers himself a “storyteller.” He revisits this theme in the Epilogue when he admits to embellishing some parts of his story before suggesting that listeners “open [themselves] to every beautiful possibility, for there is nothing our hearts can imagine that is not so” (444). The dual function of stories, then, is to evoke beauty and to explore formerly unknown possibilities.

Mrs. Brickman takes a different perspective. When Odie pushes back against her interpretation of Aesop’s “The Tortoise and the Hare,” she declares, “The stories you hear now are the ones I tell you. And they mean just what I say they mean” (7). To her, storytelling is a means of manipulation and control. Odie’s stories, by contrast, serve a variety of purposes. Some, such as the story of the monster who kills a school bully, console or frighten listeners. Others, such as the story of Emmy’s escape from her aunt through a mirror, symbolically affirm or celebrate past choices and events. Odie’s recasting of his adventures as a fairy tale, including fantastic counterparts for each of his companions, transforms their mundane struggles into heroic clashes. Instead of making their lives seem duller or cruder by comparison, these stories awaken Odie and his companion to the beauty and heroism around and within them. Perhaps it is this ability for stories to change those who share them that prompts Sister Eve to ask, “Maybe the universe is one grand story, and who says that it can’t be changed in the telling?” (438).