51 pages 1 hour read

This Tender Land

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2019

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Part 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1: “God Is a Tornado”

Part 1, Prologue Summary

An elderly, self-described “storyteller” who lives on the banks of the Gilead River in Fremont County, Minnesota, begins to recount his experiences as a boy during the summer of 1932 to his great-grandchildren.

Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary

Within a week of their father’s death and two years after their mother’s death, Odysseus “Odie” O’Banion, the narrator, who is eight years old, and his brother, Albert, who is 12, are enrolled as the only White students at the Lincoln Indian Training School in Minnesota. When the school’s superintendent, Mrs. Brickman, whom the students refer to as “the Black Witch” (12), tells the story of the tortoise and the hare, Odie questions her interpretation. She tells him that she is responsible for selecting and interpreting stories. That night, Mr. Brickman takes Odie and Albert to sleep in a cold cell called the “quiet room,” whose only occupant is a rat Albert nicknames Faria after a character from Alexandre Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo.

Four years later, after another night in the quiet room, Mrs. Brickman threatens to send Odie to a reformatory school if his behavior doesn’t improve. She also threatens to take his harmonica, a gift from his father.

Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary

Albert and Herman Volz, a kind man who runs the school’s carpentry shop, tend Odie’s back where he was whipped the night before. They proceed to the dining hall, where Volz gives Odie his assignment for the day and procures a late breakfast for him. Each day, the students are assigned to work at the school or in the community, a practice that enables local farmers to obtain free labor. Albert, who is one of the school’s best students, asks Odie why he set a snake on Mrs. Brickman the day before. Odie explains that he didn’t do it.

Cora Frost, a woman who teaches at the school, appears with her six-year-old daughter, Emmaline “Emmy” Frost, and tells Albert and Odie that she convinced Mr. Brickman to reassign them to work for her. On the way to her house, they stop at Hector Bledsoe’s farm, the site of Odie’s original assignment, to pick up Moses “Mose” Washington, also reassigned at her request. Bledsoe is annoyed to see Mose, his strongest worker, leave. Mose, who cannot talk, climbs into the back of Mrs. Frost’s truck alongside Albert and Odie and signs his relief to them.

Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary

They arrive at Mrs. Frost’s farm, where her husband died a year ago in a farming accident. After working through the morning, they eat lunch together. At Emmy’s request, Odie plays “Shenandoah” on his harmonica, but he switches to more lighthearted music when he sees Mrs. Frost crying. After a few more hours’ work, the boys take Emmy for a canoe ride in the nearby Gilead River.

Part 1, Chapter 4 Summary

Odie, Albert, and Mose return to find Mr. and Mrs. Brickman waiting to take them back to the school. Pleased by Albert’s admission of fault, Mrs. Brickman sentences Odie and Moses to spend the night in the quiet room, where Odie signs a story about a windigo, a monster from Native American mythology, killing a school bully.

During the night, Volz lets Odie and Mose out of the quiet room and takes them to a shed where Albert feeds them. Albert secretly helps Volz produce bootlegged liquor in the shed, a skill Albert learned from his father. Odie plays a few tunes before returning to the quiet room with Mose.

Mose, who is Sioux, was sent to the school when he was found on the side of the road with his tongue cut out at the age of four. His mother, shot by an unknown assailant, was found dead nearby. When Odie and Albert, who learned sign language from their mother, arrived at the school, they taught Mose and the Frosts to sign

Part 1, Chapter 5 Summary

The next day, Odie and Mose work for Bledsoe in the morning then return to the school for a baseball game. Mose pitches, and their team wins the game. Odie is worried not to see Albert present.

Later that night, Vincent DiMarco, the school’s groundskeeper who has a reputation for sexually abusing students, appears in the dormitory. Odie confronts DiMarco when he invents an excuse to take Billy Red Sleeve, one of the younger students, to the quiet room. DiMarco attacks Odie but leaves when Volz and Albert appear. The next day, Billy vanishes.

Part 1, Chapter 6 Summary

On Sunday morning, the students attend a Catholic church service. Mr. Brickman gives a sermon comparing God, himself, and Mrs. Brickman to shepherds. Afterward, Mrs. Frost tells Odie, Albert, and Mose that she wants to adopt them.

In the afternoon, the male students attend a Boy Scout meeting. That night, Odie worries about Billy, who is still missing. Albert warns Odie not to put his trust in God, since shepherds eat their sheep “one by one” (54).

Part 1, Chapter 7 Summary

The next morning, Odie and Mose work for Bledsoe. They return to the school early as a storm breaks. A tornado appears and heads toward the Frosts’ farm. Arriving at the farm, Odie, Albert, Mose, Volz, and Mr. Brickman find the house destroyed but Emmy safe.

Part 1, Chapter 8 Summary

After Mrs. Frost’s body is found, Mrs. Brickman decides to adopt Emmy. At Mrs. Frost’s funeral, Odie surprises the Brickmans by performing “Shenandoah.” That afternoon, Odie is assigned to work for DiMarco. Instead, he returns to the Frost property, where he rummages for a photo of Emmy with her parents. Upon returning to the school, DiMarco whips Odie, confiscates his harmonica, and locks him in the quiet room.

Part 1, Chapter 9 Summary

That night, Odie cries when he sees that Faria is dead. DiMarco appears in the middle of the night, claims that Emmy ran away, and asks for Odie’s help. DiMarco leads him to a nearby quarry. There, Odie sees a doll that belonged to Billy. Odie realizes that DiMarco intends to kill him, just as he killed Billy. Trying to escape, Odie falls over the edge and lands on a ledge. He reaches up and pulls DiMarco into the quarry. DiMarco falls to his death. Mose, who went looking for Odie after seeing the empty quiet room, helps Odie climb back up.

Part 1, Chapter 10 Summary

Fearing that the authorities will not believe Odie’s story, Odie, Mose, and Albert decide to run away. Together with Volz, they go to the Brickmans’ home to retrieve Odie’s harmonica. They find Mr. Brickman in bed with the school’s music teacher. Albert threatens to reveal the affair, along with Mr. Brickman’s involvement in Volz’s bootlegging, to Mrs. Brickman, who is out of town. Odie gives Emmy the photograph of her family, and she asks to go with them. Mr. Brickman draws a gun from his safe, but Mose throws a paperweight, knocking him out. Albert removes the contents of the safe, including the harmonica, money, and documents.

Part 1, Chapter 11 Summary

Before leaving, Odie paints “God is a tornado” on the town’s water tower. Years earlier, another runaway student famously painted “Welcome to Hell” on the water tower. Volz provides supplies and wishes Odie, Albert, Mose, and Emmy well as they set off down the Gilead River in Mrs. Frost’s canoe.

Part 1 Analysis

Part 1 introduces several themes. The mythical, even religious, tone of the Prologue sets the stage for Odie’s struggle throughout the novel to come to terms with a higher power. That struggle begins following the death of Mrs. Frost, which leads Odie to develop a notion of God as a kind of cosmic tornado. This concept is opposed to the biblical image of God as a shepherd, which Albert turns on its head.

Storytelling also takes a prominent role. Odie’s initial disagreement with Mrs. Brickman about the interpretation of a story she tells demonstrates the value he places on stories. Mrs. Brickman’s attempt to control stories becomes a kind of violence, just as Odie’s resistance takes the form of storytelling when he characterizes her as the Black Witch.

Krueger’s treatment of the Lincoln Indian Training School presents such schools as a legacy of imperialism. Once a military fort used to fight Native American peoples, the building now serves a more insidious but no less culturally destructive purpose: to “kill the Indian, save the man” (42), as the saying goes. This is accomplished by stripping the Native American students of their language, religion, clothing, and more. Though he is not Native American, Odie recognizes the injustices perpetuated at the school, as when he notes the irony of a Boy Scout leader teaching Native American students skills that, “if white people had never interfered, they would have known how to do almost from birth” (50).

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