Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #532925 in Books
• Published on: 2002-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Amazon.co.uk 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 centre of Leif Enger's remarkable first novel, Peace Like a River. Rube recalls the events of his childhood, 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 Land 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, Amazon.com

Review
From across the Atlantic, a first novel from 39-year-old Leif Enger. Writing with a wisdom and insight beyond his years, this is at once a heart-warming and heart-breaking story of a family struggling to stay together in the face of adversity. Set in 1962 Dakota, it is narrated by 11-year-old Reuben, an asthmatic from birth. The family is headed by Jeremiah, a god-loving man prone to carrying out unexplained miracles, Davy the elder brother and 9-year-old sister Swede, their mother having abandoned them at an early age. Being a lowly school janitor, Jeremiah is picked on not only by the staff but by two local bullies, especially when he catches the latter up to no good in a locker room. The incident escalates into a vendetta between the bullies and Davy, ending in the bullies murder, as witnessed by Reuben, when they break into the family's home one night. Immediately arrested for their murder, Davy enjoys brief celebrity before being tried for murder. However, before the trial ends, he escapes jail and sets off on the run into the Dakota Badlands. The rest of the family follow after miraculously acquiring an Airstream trailer. Through ill health, cold and poverty they follow ever onwards, followed in turn by a federal agent hot on Davy's trail. Running out of petrol they arrive at Roxanna's gas station and it is here that Reuben eventually finds his brother and holds the future of his family and most of all, that of Davy. Running alongside this is Swede's remarkable rhyming verse about the Wild West and Sunny Sundown, her Western hero, drawing parallels with Davy's fate. But it is Reuben's struggle to do what is best despite enduring life-threatening asthma attacks and his courage that shines through the narrative to make this a memorable read, one that will remain in the mind for some time after. - Lucy Watson

Birmingham Post
'Poetic, magical and deeply moving...a remarkable book that can't come too highly recommended as an antidote for our uncertain times.'

Customer Reviews

My favourite book of the year.
Eleven-year-old Reuben Hand began life by not breathing for twelve minutes. But by a miracle he survived 'in order to be a witness' to other miracles. He is the compelling narrator of this funny, tragic, and ultimately uplifting story. The members of Reuben's family are irresistible: his eight-year old sister Swede, who writes epic poems about cowboys; his older brother Davy, a man at 16; and his father Jeremiah, a man of faith - real faith.

Peace Like a River has elements of To Kill A Mockingbird, Cold Mountain, and Cormac McCarthy's modern westerns, but it is a masterpiece in its own right. Every sentence is a joy, every thought is fresh, every character believable. Without being preachy or moralising it does what stories are meant to do: inspires you to live a better life.

'Heartachingly Beautiful'? Yes!
Leif Enger's beautiful writing has a rhythm that is both comforting and delightful.

It took me a chapter or two to get 'hooked' and the references to the wild west were sometimes a struggle for me (never having seen a western in my life!), but I would still whole-heartedly recommend it. The 'feel' of this book is just lovely, with an engrossing storyline and a magical twist.

The ending, particularly the chapter before last, was deeply moving and perhaps the best ending to a book I've ever read.

A miraculous story of family, life and faith.
This book tells through Rueben Land's eyes (and as sole eyewitness) the story of the events leading to the detention and subsequent exile of his elder brother Davy and his family's journey through North Dakota to find him. The story is reinforced and fabled through the poetry of Rueben's sister Swede and through reference to biblical events, western folklore, Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson and more. It has the innocence of To Kill a Mocking Bird and the poverty but not pity of Angela's Ashes. Incredulous events become credible as this story grows on you with each page. Each member of the Land family both require and provide physical and spiritual healing. It is a triumph of faith, fate and hard work told in a style that leaves you with a feeling that the world is a better place. A remarkable debut novel and a must read.