"This is God," the novel begins, and we are spinning on our way into the heart of a Midwest that spans spirits and centuries and forever redefines the middle of nowhere.
Whispers plague a desperate conquistador lost in tall prairie grass. Four hundred years later, a male go-go dancer flings a bag of dope into the same field. God, in the person of a perm-giving, sheetcake-baking Nebraska farm woman, casts a jaundiced yet merciful eye over the unfolding chaos. Fire and a pair of judiciously applied pantyhose bring the two stories together. A contemplation of divinity and drugs on the ground, Tin God is a funny yet poignant, time-shifting story of the plains that transcends its interstate spine and exposes us to a whole new level of Svoboda's fiery prose.
Terese Svoboda, a native of Ogallala, Nebraska, is the author of five volumes of poetry and four novels, including Bohemian Girl (Nebraska, 2011); a collection of short stories, Trailer Girl and Other Stories (Nebraska, 2009); a nonfiction book, Black Glasses Like Clark Kent: A GI's Secret from Postwar Japan, winner of the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize; and a New York Times Book Review Writer's Choice selection, Cleaned the Crocodile's Teeth, translated from the Nuer, the language of a South Sudanese people, many of whom have settled in Nebraska.
Industry Reviews
Fabulous fabulist Svoboda checks in to indulge a talent for wild, sketchy comedy. Laid in Willa Cather country, this quick take has some of Thomas Pynchon's quirky Americana crossed with the Indian tales of Jaime de Angulo... Svoboda loves her red-state mopes, and that warmth both illuminates and animates her eccentric prose. Publishers Weekly "It's hard to spell out dreamsto rein them in, to make the story under our lives rise to the surface. Terese Svoboda brings a light hand, a pinch of humor and a lot of irreverence to this weighty task with her new novel, Tin God... [T]he wisdom of Tin God lies in the idea that, in dreams, some people get within spitting distance of God, while others sleep the sleep of forgetting." Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times "Svoboda's fiction is marked by the same dark felicity of language found in her poetry... A sense of urgency pervades all of her work, giving the words a pulse, making her language race with insistence." Timothy Schaffert, Poets and Writers "Svoboda's fiercely symbolic and brashly audacious allegory is a fanciful yet cautionary tale." Booklist "In this book, god is not a solemn, dignified deity but a wisecracking woman with attention deficit disorderthe intentionally lower-case, working-class version of a supreme being... Readers will find Svoboda's perspective on God, faith, and the impulses that drive human behavior original and quirky. Her characters are self-absorbed buffoons at times but totally believable. This funny romp is very highly recommended for public libraries." Library Journal Tin God is a unique and thrilling ride through God's country and the human imagination. Mariya Gusev, Literary Review
