Tin God

“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 Terese Svoboda’s fiery prose.

"Tin God is confidently-written, often beautiful, sometimes profane, and strange in the best possible way. . . . It seems to me that Terese Svoboda is a true original."Emily St. John Mandel, The Millions, “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, "In this book, god is not a solemn, dignified deity but a wisecracking woman with attention deficit disorder—the 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, "Svoboda's fiercely symbolic and brashly audacious allegory is a fanciful yet cautionary tale."—Booklist, "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

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.