Celebrated by the New York Times Book Review for its “genuine grace and beauty,” Terese Svoboda’s work has been called “desperate, chilling, seductive” (Vogue) and “haunting and profound” (A. M. Homes), while Vanity Fair warned that it “detonates on contact.” In Tin God, her writing can only be called . . . divine. “This is God,” the novel begins, helpfully spelling G-O-D for the reader, 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 story of the plains that transcends its interstate spine and exposes us to a whole new level of Svoboda’s fiery prose.

Terese Svoboda, a native of Ogallala, Nebraska, is the author of eight books of prose and poetry, including Trailer Girl and Other Stories, Cannibal, and Treason. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in many publications, including Harper’s, Paris Review, and The New Yorker.

"Svoboda's fiercely symbolic and brashly audacious allegory is a fanciful yet cautionary tale."—Booklist

"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

“This new title from the University of Nebraska Press shimmers with crisp writing, an out-of-the ordinary story and unique characters." —Lincoln Journal Star

"It's hard to spell out dreams—to rein them in, to make the story under our lives rise to the surface. Terese Svoboda brings a light hand, a pinch of humor and a lot of irreverence to this weighty task with her new novel, Tin God. . . . [T]he wisdom of Tin God lies in the idea that, in dreams, some people get within spitting distance of God, while others sleep the sleep of forgetting." —Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times

"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

"Fabulous fabulist Svoboda (Trailer Girl) 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. . . . Back and forth the narrative moves, with Steinian The Making of Americans logic gluing together this eccentric vision of a God-driven Middle America. Svoboda loves her red-state mopes, and that warmth both illuminates and animates her eccentric prose."—Publishers Weekly