Peace Like a River [Paperback]

Leif Enger (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 2, 2002

When Israel Finch and Tommy Basca, the town bullies, break into the home of school caretaker Jeremiah Land, wielding a baseball bat and looking for trouble, they find more of it than even they expected. For seventeen-year-old Davey is sitting up in bed waiting for them with a Winchester rifle. His younger brother Reuben has seen their father perform miracles, but Jeremiah now seems as powerless to prevent Davey from being arrested for manslaughter, as he has always been to ease Reuben's daily spungy struggle to breathe. Nor does brave and brilliant nine-year-old Swede, obsessed as she is with the legends of the wild west, have the strength to spring Davey from jail. Yet Davey does manage to break out. He steals a horse, and disappears. His family feels his absence so sorely, the three of them just pile into their old Plymouth, towing a brand new 1963 Airstream trailer, and set out on a quest to find him. And they follow the outlaw west, right into the cold, wild and empty Dakota Badlands. Set in the 1960s on the edge of the Great Plains, PEACE LIKE A RIVER is that rare thing, a contemporary novel with an epic dimension. Told in the touching voice of an asthmatic eleven-year-old boy, it revels in the legends of the West, resonates with a soul-expanding sense of place, and vibrates with the possibility of magic in the everyday world. Above all, it shows how family, love, and faith can stand up to the most terrifying of enemies, the most tragic of fates.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

To the list of great American child narrators that includes Huck Finn and Scout Finch, let us now add Reuben "Rube" Land, the asthmatic 11-year-old boy at the center of Leif Enger's remarkable first novel, Peace Like a River. Rube recalls the events of his childhood, in small-town Minnesota circa 1962, in a voice that perfectly captures the poetic, verbal stoicism of the northern Great Plains. "Here's what I saw," Rube warns his readers. "Here's how it went. Make of it what you will." And Rube sees plenty.

In the winter of his 11th year, two schoolyard bullies break into the Lands' house, and Rube's big brother Davy guns them down with a Winchester. Shortly after his arrest, Davy breaks out of jail and goes on the lam. Swede is Rube's younger sister, a precocious writer who crafts rhymed epics of romantic Western outlawry. Shortly after Davy's escape, Rube, Swede, and their father, a widowed school custodian, hit the road too, swerving this way and that across Minnesota and North Dakota, determined to find their lost outlaw Davy. In the end it's not Rube who haunts the reader's imagination, it's his father, torn between love for his outlaw son and the duty to do the right, honest thing. Enger finds something quietly heroic in the bred-in-the-bone Minnesota decency of America's heartland. Peace Like a River opens up a new chapter in Midwestern literature. --Claire Dederer --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Dead for 10 minutes before his father orders him to breathe in the name of the living God, Reuben Land is living proof that the world is full of miracles. But it's the impassioned honesty of his quiet, measured narrative voice that gives weight and truth to the fantastic elements of this engrossing tale. From the vantage point of adulthood, Reuben tells how his father rescued his brother Davy's girlfriend from two attackers, how that led to Davy being jailed for murder and how, once Davy escapes and heads south for the Badlands of North Dakota, 12-year-old Reuben, his younger sister Swede and their janitor father light out after him. But the FBI is following Davy as well, and Reuben has a part to play in the finale of that chase, just as he had a part to play in his brother's trial. It's the kind of story that used to be material for ballads, and Enger twines in numerous references to the Old West, chiefly through the rhymed poetry Swede writes about a hero called Sunny Sundown. That the story is set in the early '60s in Minnesota gives it an archetypal feel, evoking a time when the possibility of getting lost in the country still existed. Enger has created a world of signs, where dead crows fall in a snowstorm and vagrants lie curled up in fields, in which everything is significant, everything has weight and comprehension is always fleeting. This is a stunning debut novel, one that sneaks up on you like a whisper and warms you like a quilt in a North Dakota winter, a novel about faith, miracles and family that is, ultimately, miraculous.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Black Swan (September 2, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0552999350
• ISBN-13: 978-0552999359
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (472 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,716,999 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

279 of 303 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Reuben Land, Holden Caulfield and Francis McCourt, November 4, 2001

By 

MICHAEL ACUNA (Southern California United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Peace Like a River (Hardcover)

I've had to re-write this review three times because the first drafts made me sound like a gushing, blushing school girl. That's how enamored of this novel I am. Leif Enger's "Peace Like A River" is the story of the Land family set in the early 1960's in rural Minnesota: Jeremiah the father, Davy the eldest son, Reuben, 11 yrs old and the novel's narrator, and Swede, daughter and sister, verse writer and an "Old West" afficianado. The story itself is simple: Davy kills two young men who have broken into the Land home, is put on trial for murder and escapes jail when it seems he is to be convicted. Obviously this turns the Land Family upside down and the bulk of the novel is concerned with finding Davy and forging, through necessity, a new life for all. The novel begins with the birth of Reuben, who appears stillborn until Jeremiah enters the operating room: "As mother cried out. Dad turned back to me, a clay child wrapped in a canvas coat, and said in a normal voice, "Reuben Land, in the name of the living God I am telling you to breathe." And so begins the first of the "miracles" which occur throughout this novel. And no, this is not a religious novel per se though faith is very important to the Land family, Jeremiah is particular. And Leif Enger is not only concerned with the hereafter, he's also very aware of the here and now. I've never read a novel that mentions, explains, makes reference to such a disparate set of characters: Teddy Roosevelt, God, Jesus, Butch Cassidy, Robert Louis Stevenson, Bob and Cole Younger, Jesse James,Swanson chicken-in-a-can, "Moby Dick," Lewis and Clark, Moses, Natty Bumppo, Jonah ("...such a griper. Whine all day. Probably God sent the whale so He could get three days of peace and quiet."). And much more. Enger, obviously bursting with knowledge, makes these references out of a need and a love to inform and in the process inbues his characters with these same qualities ( As a contrast,in "American Psycho," Bret Easton Ellis makes ten times as many cultural references than does Enger but the effect is showy,coy and ultimately boring). There is also great Love and caring in "Peace Like a River." The Land's truly love each other with the kind of love that accepts, forgives and annoints themselves and each other as in holy communion.
"Peace Like A River" is energetic, magical and beautifully written in a style that can only be called gorgeous: "Was there ever a place you loved to go--your grandma's house, where you were a favorite child...and you arrived once as she lay in sickness? Remember how the light seemed wrong, and the adults off-key and the ambient and persistent joy you'd grown to expect in that place was gone, slipped off as the ghost slips the body?" "Peace like a River" can now take it's place among the pantheon of similar-themed novels: Barry Udall's "The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint," J.D. Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye" and Frank McCourt's "Angela's Ashes." Pretty good company...if you ask me.

48 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Very beautiful reading, April 18, 2006

By 

K. Henry "K." (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Peace Like a River (Paperback)

Yes, I know I only gave it three, but I'm picking. It was not a bad book at all, and I will be rereading. The book is not great, but it's pretty darn good.

It's in the same crowd as novels like Sue Monk Kidd's and quite a few others lately involving child narrators - one of the most exceptional of the genre. The details and description, though never overdone, are spot-on. And Jeremiah Land is a single father who rivals Atticus Finch (though I'm not comparing this book to "To Kill a Mockingbird" on any other grounds).

I note someone complained about Swede. I don't entirely agree that it's impossible for some children to have such an aptitude for English. I do agree that the author was rather annoyingly doting about her. But she's entirely made up for by her brother Reuben. His scene in the courtroom where his pride gets the best of him, among other scenes, entirely nails a sense of childishness and the sort of petty, ridiculous pride that none of us ever completely shake off.

I also noted one person say the book was too religious and another say that it wasn't religious but "spiritual." Well, the latter view is nonsense. Religion - dyed-in-the-wool, unabashed, prevalent Christiantiy, of the American Protestant brand - is one of the major themes of the book. That being said, I can rebut the first person's view of it being "too religious." You might as well say "To Kill a Mockingbird" is "too concerned about white-black relationships," or "Tess of the d'Urbervilles" is "too fatalistic." You may be annoyed by the theme, but that's what the book is about - it's the very backbone of it. If you think it should be less religious, you're asking it to be an entirely different book. And if you can't swallow so much "in your face" religion, you'll simply have to find something to read out of the very slim pool of books that share your exact convictions.

To recap - don't spend your last cent on this, but if you can get a hold of this book and a free sunny weekend, don't pass up the chance! You'll enjoy something fairly easy and unfailingly beautiful.

80 of 84 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars He's Got a Whole World in His Hand, November 19, 2001

By 

Charles F. Brim (Dallas, Tx United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Peace Like a River (Hardcover)

Within a few paragraphs of begining Leif Enger's "Peace Like a River", I had to stop and smile and turn the book over to read Frank McCourt's("Angela's Ashes")comments on the back one more time. I looked again at the cover and title that had drawn me to the book for a quick read of the jacket and then back a second time to buy it. I thought of the world I had just entered through the hand of Mr. Enger and Reuben, his self-effacing and often winded eleven year old narrator. I reread some lines that set the place and time as rural Minnesota in the 1950's and I thought of the father, Jerimiah, whose plain as cotton faith is the engine of the Land family's journey. The misfortune and drama that tracks their wifeless, motherless world was compelling and vivid, like Ruben's writing prodigy sister Swede's Old West poetry. I flat-out love this book and it's "To Kill A Monkingbird"-like simplicity and power. I've sung a few old hymns in the style and substance I think Leif Enger would appreciate. In a way, reading his story was like that - comforting and profound with familiar themes masterfully played. "Peace Like A River" has, in one reading, become my most admired work of fiction, and easily one of the ten best books I've read. Ever.