This Tender Land

In every good tale there is a seed of truth, and from that seed a lovely story grows.  Some of what I have told you is true and some...well, let's just call it the bloom on the rosebud. A woman who can heal the afflicted? A girl who looks into the future and wrestles what she sees there?  Yet are these things more difficult to accept than that all of existence came out of a single, random moment when gases exploded? Our eyes perceive so dimly, and our brains are so easily confused. Far better, I believe, to be like children, and open ourselves to every possibility, for there is nothing our hearts can imagine that is not so.

That's pretty much the book in one little philosophic nutshell.  Odie O'Banion and his three companions run from an abusive home for Native American children and spend the summer of 1932 on an odyssey that takes them to places that life will never reveal to most of us.  They survive the unthinkable because they must, and because they believe they can.  Krueger pays homage to The Grapes of Wrath, Oliver Twist, Huckleberry Finn, and the legend of Odysseus in this lush story of challenge and will. So much grit. So much pain. Loss. Devastation. Hopelessness.  The genius of Krueger's writing is that he wraps all the nastiness in beautiful, lyrical prose that, at time, read like the words of a softly cooed lullaby.  Put this one on your To Read list, for sure.

You all know how books go in trends, right?  We had vampires, post-apocalypse, rich kids doing bad things and being protected by irresponsible adults, Holocaust, grumpy old men and dying dogs.  I predict that 2020 will be the year of the orphan.  Watch for book covers with little shoes on dirt roads, kids sitting on suitcases, empty backyard swings.  Yup..our hearts are going to be breaking. Invest in tissue.

Shorter posts from now one...people tell me I get too wordy and wander too much.  So, I'm listening.

Thanks for stopping by.