The Turtle Catcher

The Turtle Catcher is an engrossing beautifully written novel set in "New Germany" Minnesota; he author weaves an arresting tale of immigrants and their successes and struggles to maintain their German culture in an almost self-contained community where they can cling to their language and customs. The novel begins with the brutal drowning in of Lester Sutter, a man whose heart and feelings are good, but whose brain is damaged from years of abuse at the hands of his brutal father who is not part of this transported Germanic community. The daughter of an ambitious and successful German-American farmer, Liesel, is a girl of unbelievable strength, kindness and courage who suffers emotionally from a genital deformity. Liesel befriends Lester and bestows the only kindnesses and gentleness this unfortunate young man has ever known. He in turn catches turtles in the lake and silently leaves the slaughtered creatures for Liesel who cooks them to feed the family she is left to raise after her mother dies during childbirth. The German community members become successful and the non-German farmers are filled with increasing resentment and envy. They become enraged and are stirred to commit extraordinarily violent acts by a zealous and jingoistic Minnesota politician during the time before the United States entered the First World War. The new and the older generations clash about German Americans going to war to fight Germans. There are flashbacks to earlier brutality and bloodshed in territorial fights with the Native Americans in the area. Nicole Helget's writing took my breath away and I was unable to put this book down until I got to the end. She is a gifted storyteller and her writing reminds me of some of my favorite authors including Annie Proulx, Joyce Carol Oats and Ann Marie McDonald.

I'm a librarian in a small town in Wisconsin and when someone recommended this book to me I took it home, read it and loved it. I am now recommending it to all my discerning readers. This book is so well written...some passages are pure poetry. Yes, the book is dark and, at times, even achingly sad. But an author like Nicole Helget, who is capable of evoking feelings for her characters, who is capable of transporting the reader to another place and time, is the only type of author worth reading.

A most engaging story of family life, beliefs and ethnic differences in the Minnesota farmlands highlighting social concerns and predjudice of the early 1900's. A must read for anyone interested in American History.

The Turtle Catcher" begins with a strong accent: in 1920, in New Germany, Minnesota, three brothers, Herman, Benjamin and Otto Richter, force Lester Sutter, a village simpleton, to drown. Held at gunpoint, Lester does not have a choice. Slowly, weighed down by the rocks sewn into his pockets, he disappears under the surface of the water in Spider Lake. The brothers have managed to avenge the pain of their sister, Liesel, hurt by Lester. They are satisfied... but Lester is awake and haunts the family for years... This beginning chapter, published before as a short story, erupts into a poignant, significant and dark novel, where the intertwined fates of two feuding families full of mysteries are only a canvas, used to paint the portrait of an era, a place and a community. The World War I, or the Great War, put the German immigrants in the United States in front of an impossible choice. They had to fight on a side of their new homeland, killing their family members in the Old Country, or refuse to fight and face political and social ostracism. The Richter family does not escape this fate, although Herman decides to fight in the American army... And emerges damaged, physically and spiritually. There is a lot of pain and personal tragedy, a lot of hidden emotions and violent actions, outcasts and strong personalities. Nearly every character from the Richter family has a story, starting with the mother, Magdalena, through the eldest son, quiet Benjamin, so different from the other brothers, the middle son, sullen Herman, the handsome Luther who met a tragic end, and the youngest, Otto, who was the end of his mother. And the most painful of all is the secret of their sister Liesel, who harbors it for years and causes the death of her only friend Lester. I loved this novel, so full of extraordinary-ordinary characters, whose psychological portraits are painted with subtle, but decisive lines. The prose was well paced and rich, and the subject matter fresh and, at the same time, weighty, there was no banality there. I think it is a very good debut novel, developing the short story from a small nucleus into a core of a work of importance, a book to remember.

From 1897 Germany to 1920 New Germany, Minnesota, THE TURTLE CATCHER tells a story of outcasts, friendships, and retribution. In the first chapters, set in 1920 New Germany, Minnesota, the three Richter brothers take justice into their own hands when their sister Liesl cries out against Lester but remains silent, protecting the secret she carries in her body from being discovered. An outcast due to her hidden deformity, Liesl and the brain-damaged Lester Sutter had formed a friendship that has transcended their individual isolation. From this one brutal moment, Nicole Helget looks backward in time to all the events that led to this heinous crime. Alongside the main thread of the Richter-Sutter feud, Nicole Helget creates haunting broader resonances of once friendships that end in historic retribution from the relationship of the Sioux and the Minnesota residents to the German and Scandinavian immigrants. Within this context, THE TURTLE CATCHER tells the love story of Magdalena Schultz, or Maggie, and her daughter Liesl. Pregnant and in love with a Jewish man, Maggie immigrates to America rather than tell her father who blames the Jews for his fall in status. Likewise, Liesl falls for Lester, the son of Harald Sutter, the man Richter blames for his downfall. Sutter equally blames Richter for his misfortune. The parallels between Maggie and her daughter's stories are not slavish copies of one another but rather haunt with the similarities and differences, creating a broader picture of the movement of a family and indeed women within a family through generations. THE TURTLE CATCHER clearly is not a novel that will appeal to all readers. Several brutal scenes from a vicious murder and horrific scene of childbirth to self-mutilation make the reader recoil in a revulsion that is often visceral. THE TURTLE CATCHER does not present a linear easy-to-follow plot but rather builds through a careful layering of sometimes seemingly disparate vignettes joined together by their thematic resonances rather than by a strict chronology. Throughout most of the novel, Nicole Helget presents readers with a grim portrait of a cast of severely flawed characters. Historic events only exaggerate some of the more unsettling aspects of her characters. Just when a reader thinks things can't possibly get worse, they do. THE TURTLE CATCHER, however, will appeal to other readers precisely for those literary qualities and the way in which the author combines history and personal history to examine the outcast and the dynamics of unthinkable retribution. THE TURTLE CATCHER takes an unflinching look into the small town of New Germany, Minnesota around World War I and inside a family whose secrets are hidden from plain sight. One sees the sins of the parents passed down, not only to sons and daughters but also the ramifications of personal histories and a broader historic movement combining to create within individuals the worst parts of themselves. Juxtaposed