A PAIR OF PAGE TURNERS - JUNE REVIEW
PEACE LIKE A RIVER, by Leif Enger
This is an upbeat story, seen through the eyes of Reuben Land, an eleven year old asthmatic boy. Reuben’s brother kills two juveniles who are bent on malicious mischief. When his brother escapes from jail, the family, father, philosophical younger sister and Reuben, begin a drive through the unforgiving Black Hills to find him. Help comes in unlikely places along their journey. It’s a remarkable journey marked by humor, loyalty and, in the end, redemption. A wonderfully accomplished first novel.
Peace Like A River was Enger’s debut as an author. A few years ago it was chosen as the “All Denver” read.
New by Leif Enger is:
SO BRAVE, YOUNG, AND HANDSOME, published in April, 2008.
Kirkus Reviews 2008 February #2
A belated follow-up to a popular debut finds the Midwestern novelist in fine storytelling form, as he spins a picaresque tale of redemption and renewal amid the fading glories of the Old West.Some readers will undoubtedly find autobiographical implications in the protagonist conjured by Enger (Peace Like a River, 2001). In his second novel, a Minnesota writer who has enjoyed his own out-of-the-blue success with a popular novel struggles in vain to produce a suitable successor. In the opening pages of this first-person narrative, Monte Becket introduces himself as a nothing-special Everyman, a former postman who quit his job after his novel Martin Bligh reached a readership beyond the wildest expectations of both the part-time author and his publisher. Yet Becket has since suffered a crisis of confidence, starting and abandoning seven different manuscripts over a four-year period until he fears that his success was just a fluke. This story has its start in 1915, just as Becket abandons his final manuscript, when a mysterious geezer in a rowboat passes his Minnesota riverfront home (with a nod toward Enger’s earlier novel, rivers run through this one) and ultimately entices Becket to join him on an adventure that will change both of their lives. The mysterious man’s name may or may not be Glendon Hale; he may or may not be an outlaw on the run; and he most certainly is a boat-building alcoholic. With the encouragement of his painter wife, Becket leaves behind a comfortable home and a loving family to accompany Hale on a pilgrimage, one that will find Becket learning more about his companion’s identity while assuming an alias of his own. As they head south toward Mexico and then west to California, they find their travels enlivened by a young accomplice who joins them and a pursuer who trails them, a former Pinkerton detective who has also enjoyed some literary success. Revelations abound, for both Becket and the reader.Though Becket laments that he “can’t write a(nother) book that anyone will want to read,” Enger has.
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