The Turtle Catcher [Hardcover]

Nicole Lea Helget (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 20, 2009

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 wake of her parents' deaths, Liesel turns to her only friend—leading her brother, just returned from the war, to an act that will haunt not only both families but the entire town. Helget's novel is a story of loyalty and betrayal that, like her earlier book, proves her uncommon understanding of the natural world and human frailties. Both moving and heartfelt, The Turtle Catcher confirms this young writer's exceptional talent.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A rural Minnesota town struggling through change before, during and after WWI forms the background for this emotional tale of star-crossed love, vengeance and regret. Liesel, the only girl in a family of men, lives an isolated life on a farm due to her secret identity as a hermaphrodite. Her loneliness is lessened by her friendship with Lester, her mentally challenged neighbor, but when Lester discovers Liesels secret, Liesel incites her brothers to exact a vicious revenge on him. As the novel skips back and forth through time in elliptical vignettes, Helget illustrates how tensions between the towns German residents, including Liesel, and their more assimilated neighbors eventually boil over into anger and violence as sides are chosen and families are pulled apart. Helget establishes the setting beautifully, pulling the reader immediately into the social milieu of the small town, and even if her prose can veer into preciousness, the novel is, on balance, melancholy but enjoyable. (Feb.)
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From Booklist

New Germany, Minnesota, is home to German, Swedish, and Norwegian immigrants and has a tumultuous past, from Indian attacks on settlers to seething racism, particularly in the years surrounding WWI, the focus of this story. Leisl Richter is a strange, secretive, and independent young woman living in New Germany, and her would-be suitor is kind but slow Lester Sutter, brain damaged from his father’s beatings. Even as conflicting loyalties tear apart the German community, hatred seethes among other townsfolk, especially for prosperous farmer Wilhelm Richter, who’s always happy to buy foreclosed land and farm equipment. Historical fiction with a slight touch of magical realism, The Turtle Catcher is a moving portrait of difficult times and vividly realized characters. Winner of the Minnesota Monthly Tamarack Prize, judged by NPR’s Scott Simon, this appealing first novel will attract historical-fiction readers, especially in the Upper Midwest. --Jessica Moyer

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co; 1 edition (February 20, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618753125
• ISBN-13: 978-0618753123
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,200,183 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Born in 1976, NICOLE LEA HELGET grew up on a farm in southern Minnesota, a childhood and place she drew on in the writing of her memoir, The Summer of Ordinary Ways. She received her BA and an MFA in creative writing from Minnesota State University, Mankato. Based on the novel's first chapter, NPR's Scott Simon awarded The Turtle Catcher the Tamarack Prize from Minnesota Monthly.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Probably more interesting to Minnesota natives, January 29, 2009

By 

A.M.Boughey "Poetmaster" (Rochester, MN) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Turtle Catcher (Hardcover)

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I found this book descriptive, absorbing and well written, despite it's jumpy narrative that became tiresome in places, hence the 3 star rating. I also felt that the author not only has a real grasp of the people of the Midwestern region where the book is set, but also an uncanny ability to transport the reader back in time.
I live in Minnesota, although I'm not a native of the state (or Midwest ) but I would imagine people who are, will get even more of a kick out of reading about familiar places and towns, and the heavy European influences that helped shaped where they now live.
Amazon, and even Publishers Weekly call this a "standout debut" from an author whose previous "memoir" novella was well received, and that sounds like a bit too much praise as far as I am concerned. The Turtle Catcher is to "standout" what Tolstoy is to "brevity", so a lesser adjective would probably have been more fitting. The story is well paced, often dark, but always grounded with believability, and talks candidly about family values, differences in opinion between cultures, and feuding that would not be out of place in the World of today, just move the locations accordingly. But it's not that great. I'll spare the synopsis, which is covered enough in the description above, but will say that this is worth reading. It won't be to everyone's taste, but anyone with an interest in history, or just likes good family based drama should enjoy it. 3 stars.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A Jumpy Plot and Dense Reading Ruin This Great Story, February 5, 2009

By 

B. A. Chaney (Baltimore, MD USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Turtle Catcher (Hardcover)

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The Turtle Catcher follows the Richter family in New Germany, Minnesota, from the late 19th century to 1920. The novel begins with a terrible event--in 1920 the three Richter brothers drown their handicapped neighbor, Lester, after they believe he has violated their sister, Liesel. The rest of the novel is a flashback--from the mother of the boys, Magdalena, leaving Germany as a young unwed pregnant woman, to her eventual birthing and raising of five children, including the one who eventually kills her, the coming of age of those children in the early years of World War I, and the eventual tragedies of the Great War that rip the family, and the town of New Germany apart. Throughout the novel, Liesel conceals what she believes is a terrible secret--she's a hermaphrodite--and she convinces herself that Lester, handicapped from his father's relentless beatings--is the only man who could ever love her. As the events surrounding Lester's death come to the surface, the reader discovers the demons of the Richter family and their small town.

Although the story in The Turtle Catcher was rich--I enjoyed all of its detail, its complicated levels--the execution and writing style of the novel really killed the story for me. There were times where the language was so dense, and the story so convoluted, that I was ready to give up on this book--something that I almost never do. This book had a lot of potential, and I do think it did a good job of capturing farm life in rural Minnesota at the turn of the century, as well as the political conflict between the German immigrants in the town and the other residents.

If I could give half stars, this would really be a two and a half star review, because the book did have some good things going for it. But I don't know if I would recommend this unless someone was really interested in America before/during WWI or in turn of the century life in the Midwest.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Identity and the American Immigrant, April 16, 2009

By 

Jane E. Applebee - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Turtle Catcher (Hardcover)

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I found this a very compelling tale, historically. None of us living in the United States, other than full blooded Native Americans, are all-American. We each of us have bits and pieces from other cultures, other places, hanging onto us, partially defining us. The main character in The Turtle Catcher takes this one step further, she is physically more than one thing.

The immigrant populations of Minnesota and their interactions and views of themselves are presented from inside the German-American cultural identity as the country enters WWI. The story is set on the farm belonging to a German family. Their mother recently dead, the children have to raise themselves and define themselves as a new type from their parents. We follow their lives through the eyes of the sister upon whom falls the entire housekeeping of this male household at a tender age. Her only companions are the young brother she raises and occasional visits from the slow Scottish American neighbor boy, the eponymous Turtle Catcher who brings her turtles and occasionally takes over the burden of the story's narration.

When the brothers decide to enlist in the Army the father despairs, as many of the fathers and mothers in the town do when their sons do the same. The older people see the matter in terms of their children fighting their own people - the Germans. The children see it differently. Through new American eyes, their German identity becomes part of their past rather than a present reality. A piece of their identity, not the whole. They break from the older generation. They, like their sister, are no longer wholly any one thing. Unlike her and their parents, they refuse to remain apart from the rest of society.

In the novel the Swedes, Norwegians, and other European immigrant groups circle 'round their more prosperous German neighbors like hungry wolves, yapping with glee when they are able to exploit the pacifism of the Germans Americans as the US enters WWI, into evidence of their traitorous nature. They then leverage their slander into a means of taking the German's farms and businesses even as the German's sons are leaving to serve in the war.

It was quite a chilling tale, very dark, even brutal, but not without some sweetness.