Only a couple times a year (if I’m lucky) do I read a book that is nearly perfect to me like This Tender Land: A Novel by William Kent Kreuger.
By perfect (to me) I mean that every day I am thinking “All I want to do is read this book.” Also it has to provide artistic value (more on this below) and hit me emotionally.
This book is set in 1932 Minnesota when four kids flee a horrible home for orphaned Native American children and set off in a canoe towards the Mississippi River. Their intended destination is St. Louis, and along the way they meet other adrift Americans and lost souls, some good and some bad, but most are, as in real life, complicated. It is written as a memoir, from an older man looking back on this astounding, hazardous adventure.
It reminded me of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (river travel), Where the Crawdad’s Sing (feral children), and The Odyssey (the journey). It also reminded me of any other book I’ve ever read that gets the beauty of nature and humankind so perfectly.
“I left the others sleeping and stepped away from the sycamore tree. What I saw then was a thing of such beauty that I have never, across the eight decades of my life, forgotten it. The meadow that rolled away from the hill was alive with fireflies. For as far as I could see, the land was lit by millions of tiny, luminescing lanterns. They winked on and off and drifted in random currents, a sea of stars, an earthbound Milky Way. I have been to the top of the Eiffel Tower at night and gazed across the City of Lights, but all that man-made brilliance didn’t hold a candle to the miracle I witnessed on a June night along the bank of the Gilead River when I was a boy.”
Besides providing adventure, both through the physical journey and meeting different aspects of human nature, the book includes young love, has a strong musical theme (the main character Odie plays harmonica) and dances around religious themes, but is open enough on this that most can appreciate. It follows the landscape of Minnesota rivers in great detail, and I wished for a map to follow along. It also addresses our country’s inhumanity to native Americans.
I only say “nearly perfect” because of some details in the ending wrap up I didn’t feel were necessary or didn’t fit completely, maybe it just wasn’t what I needed to end the book. But obviously, the author can end it how he sees fit. Would love to discuss this with someone!! Still I loved it and strongly recommend it to most readers.
Leslie, the excerpt from this book reminded me of a night at our cabin a few years ago, it nearly brought tears to my eyes. We were all sitting around a campfire and someone had us come look at a clearing with trees all around. The stars were just beautiful that night and there were a million fireflies, it was hard to tell where the fireflies ended and the stars began. It was so perfect and like the author, I will never forget it.
Aw, thanks Lou for sharing this beautiful experience. I had a similar experience the last night we lived at our farmhouse, probably why this excerpt spoke to me too.