God is cruel?

I just finished rereading Desperation by Stephen King and in the story a minister tells a young boy who is just learning about God, that God is cruel. I've heard people say this all my life and and I just don"t understand it. In the story the boy's family has been killed one-by-one by a monster. In that context God does seem cruel, but what if there's a bigger picture that we can't see. What if what's waiting for us after death is something so much better than life on this earth. Then it wouldn't really be cruelty.

I know it seems cruel but we can't really know if we can't see the bigger picture. If we have faith in God we've got to believe that there's a reason for the things that happen. God gives us the free will to do want he wants or not to do it. So we can't blame God if things don't go the way we want them to. I don't understand how someone who says 'God is love' can say it's His fault when bad things happen, that it's His will when tragedies occur. If God is love then He can't be cruel because love is not cruel.