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Overview
Overview
Leif Enger's rhapsodic novel about a father raising his three children in 1960s Minnesota is a breathtaking celebration of family, faith, and America's pioneering spirit. Through the voice of eleven-year-old Reuben, an asthmatic boy obsessed with cowboy stories, Peace Like a River tells of the Land family's cross-country search for Reuben's outlaw older brother, who has been controversially charged with murder. Sprinkled with playful and warmhearted nods to biblical tales, classic American novels such as Huckleberry Finn, the adventure stories of Robert Louis Stevenson, and the Westerns of Zane Grey, Peace Like a River brilliantly incorporates the best elements of all these genres and ultimately earns its own prominent and enduring place on the shelf among them. Reuben Land was born with no air in his lungs, and it was only when his father, Jeremiah, picked him up and commanded him to breathe that his lungs filled. Reuben struggles with debilitating asthma thenceforth, but he is a boy who knows firsthand that life is a gift, and also one who suspects that his father can overturn the laws of nature. When Reuben's older brother, Davy, kills two marauders who have come to harm the family, the town is divided between those who see him as a hero and those who see him as a cold-blooded murderer. On the morning of the trial, Davy escapes from his cell, and when his family finds out they decide to go forth into the unknown in search of him. With Jeremiah -- whose faith is the stuff of legend -- at the helm, the family covers territory far more glorious than even the Badlands, where they search for Davy from their Airstream trailer. By the time the journey is over, they will have traversed boundaries of a different nature entirely. Marked by a soul-expanding sense of place and a love of storytelling, Peace Like a River is at once a heroic quest, a tragedy, a romance, and a heartfelt meditation on the possibility of magic in the everyday world.
- Format: Hardcover
- Author: Enger, Leif
- ISBN: 9780871137951
- Condition: Used
- Dimensions: 9.32 x 1.04
- Number Of Pages: 320
- Publication Year: 2001
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Top read of 2025!
Would RecommendShaleem D. - 4 months agoThis is just a wonderful book. Told through the eyes of a man recounting his youth, it flows with elegance, and suspense, and finishes in a highly satisfying way. I love this authors writing style. This book changed me in subtle yet profound ways.
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The Novel For Everyone
Amanda B. - 11 months agoLeif Enger's first novel, Peace Like A River, is a masterpiece among fiction. This is the novel that I hand to people who want to like fiction, but don't. From the first page, the story of Reuben Land and his family will leave you breathless. Enger's magical prose and master storytelling send you on an adventure across the country, into family life, and through a harrowing journey of an asthmatic boy trying to make sense of a series of unexpected events, the first of which is his taking the first breath: he spends much of the novel wondering if his father can work miracles, tells us all he's seen and leaves us to make of it what we will. I love a story that stands on its own; that says, "here's what I saw; make of it what you will," because it reads like life with a pinch more clarity and tightness of plot. Enger does not merely put words on paper; he burns a world onto the hearts of his readers. If this book weren't worth reading for its surprising plot, richly developed protagonist, beautiful prose, and incredible concrete language, it would be worth reading just to get to know Reuben's sister Swede. She is one of the best young heroines I've met. Part Scout Finch, part Anne of Green Gables, but mostly just...Swede, she navigates our Reuben through life's difficulties via the epic poem she writes over the course of the novel. She understands more than anyone that stories don't always turn out the way we expect or want...and sometimes it is better that way. A young writer fighting her way through an epic poem that subtly reflects the plot of the novel she's in: this is Hamlet's play-within-a-play: brilliant, brilliant! Peace Like A River is a novel for the ages. Everyone should read it, have a good belly laugh, a good cry, and then read it again. I couldn't put it down until the end, and I can't wait to pick it up again.
HPB Staff Review