Follow Up on William Kent Kruger interview

I have to say that the my first impression of Kruger was that he reminded me of Mr. Rogers. He did. While doing a little research on his background (after I saw the interview), I read that, before he began his writing career, he earned a Masters Degree in Early Childhood Education. I knew I loved this man!

The subject of the interview was mainly This Tender Land. He talked about how he named the characters and let them develop as he wrote. Kruger read volumes of newspapers (from the area of the setting) published during the Great Depression so he could get a feel for what was going on at the time. He and his wife kayaked and canoed down the Minnesota and the Mississippi Rivers to experience what his vagabonds would experience in the book. The author speaks of the four main characters with a fondness one might reserve for one’s grandchildren. He said that Mose was his favorite. While not fulfilling contractual obligations with the Cork O’Connor series, he is working on a third companion novel to Mercy and Tender Land.

I especially picked up on the interviewer’s question about Kruger’s own reading life as a child. Kruger told about earning his Boy Scout Reading Badge when he was about 12 year old. One of the requirements for the badge was for him to volunteer at the local library. While there one day, the librarian asked him what he liked to read. He had to answer honestly that all he ever read were comic books. The librarian pulled out The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas and suggested he read it. He did. Then he read The Three Musketeers. He couldn’t get enough of adventure books from then on.

Hearing him describe how he started reading in earnest and how reading influenced his life, made me begin to think about my own reading life. I’m not going into it in this post, but I think I might in the future. Wondering if any of you would share your journey on the blog. We might learn a lot about each other and ourselves!!