In the tumultuous days after World War I, Herman Richter returns from the front to find his only sister, Liesel, allied with Lester Sutter, the slow son of a rival clan who spends his days expertly trapping lake turtles. Liesel has sought Lester’s friendship in the wake of her parents’ deaths and in the shadow of her own dark secret. But what begins as yearning for something of a human touch quickly unwinds into a shocking, suspenseful tragedy that haunts the rural town of New Germany, Minnesota, for generations.
Woven into this remarkable story are the intense, illuminating experiences of German immigrants in America during the war and the terrible choices they were forced to make in service of their new country or in honor of the old.The Turtle Catcheris a lyrical, vibrant, beautifully wrought look at a fascinating piece of American history—and the echoing dangers of family secrets.
A standout fiction debut by a prize-winning young writer whose memoir, The Summer of Ordinary Ways, was a favorite of critics and booksellers, Nicole Helget’s fierce and lyrical memoir of growing up on a Minnesota dairy farm received widespread acclaim.
People magazine hailed the young author’s ability to “take the messiest of lives and fashion something beautiful.”Here, in her first novel,Helget turns her extraordinary sensibility to a haunting love story with a heinous crime at its core.
In a rural Minnesota town of German immigrants in the tumultuous days ofWorldWar I, The Turtle Catcher brings together two misfits from warring clans. Liesel, the one girl in the upstanding family of Richter boys, harbors a secret about her body that thwarts all hope for a normal life.Her closest friend is Lester, the “slow” boy in the raffish Sutter family, a gentle, kind soul who spends his days trapping turtles in the lake. Yearning for human touch in the wlãŠ
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