Let There Be Peace on Your Bookshelf

By now, the coming-of-age novel is a tried-and-true convention of literature, but seldom has it been as true as what’s on the pages of Leif Enger’s remarkable novel Peace Like a River.

Enger takes the best of writers like John Irving, Tony Earley and J.D. Salinger, then stakes his own territory to create a story about family, faith and fugitives that’s as rich in language as it is plot. Let’s not forget to add Harper Lee to that list as well. Peace Like a River bears more than just a passing resemblance to To Kill a Mockingbird. In both novels, parents are a deep and abiding mystery; and childhood, which once seemed to stretch forever, is marked by self-awareness and a sense of closure. End of sentence, end of chapter, end of book. Few writers are able to discuss adolescence in clear-eyed, yet rosy-nostalgia terms that will cause Grown-up Adults to nod so vigorously with recognition that their heads threaten to fall off their necks. Lee and now Enger have managed such a neat narrative trick.

Take this sentence, for instance: I remember it as October days are always remembered, cloudless, maple-flavored, the air gold and so clean it quivers. There’s plenty more where that came from.

The novel, set in the early 1960s, is narrated by 11-year-old Reuben Land, an asthmatic boy living in a motherless family whose tender circle is about to be broken by the oldest son. When 17-year-old Davy commits a crime of passion and becomes a fugitive, Reuben, his father Jeremiah and his younger sister Swede set out from Minnesota to follow Davy’s trail across the northern United States. As the family travels in their Airstream trailer and draws closer to Davy, events turn increasingly miraculous, fueled by the elder Land’s belief that he’s got a direct connection to God.

Enger fills the nooks and crannies of every paragraph with Biblical language, and does so without an ounce of condescension (I mean, you’ve got to admire someone who writes his strong smelly hands rent open the front of her sweater with a straight face). Faith and miracles crowd each page, dancing like the proverbial angels on a head of a pin. Characters literally walk on air, a pot of soup replenishes itself in loaves-and-fishes fashion, bodies are healed—and, without spoiling too much, I can tell you that there’s a vision of heaven so achingly beautiful that I’m ready to buy a ticket today.

Early in the story, Reuben writes:
Real miracles bother people…Lazarus obeying orders and climbing up out of the grave—now there’s a miracle, and you can bet it upset a lot of folks who were standing around at the time. When a person dies, the earth is generally unwilling to cough him back up. A miracle contradicts the will of earth. My sister Swede, who often sees the nub, offered this: People fear miracles because they fear being changed—though ignoring them will change you also.

Over the course of the Land family’s journey west, there are a lot of miracles and plenty of changes, just as we’ve come to expect in the best of coming-of-age novels. Thanks to its sensitivity and compassion for its characters, this is the best of the best of that genre.

The adults are seen at the periphery of the frame and it’s Reuben and Swede, with their obsession for cowboys and vigilantes, who remain most clearly in focus. Peace Like a River plumbs the depths of childhood with its innocence and blurred optimism.

The real strength of Enger’s book lies in the voice of our young asthmatic guide. Reuben Land is one of the most engaging narrators—young or old—to take control of a book’s pages in a long time. He’s funny, endearing and a fierce champion for his family, no matter how wrong their actions are.

When you read a sentence like Events seemed a wide water into which we’d stepped only to be yanked downstream toward some joyful end, you’ll feel the same way. It’s hard not to be swept away by Enger’s prose. At times, you can practically smell and taste the words on the page.

Coated with a style that could best be described as Biblical, the novel rises steadily to an unexpected and shattering climax which is sure to leave readers gasping for air in the last 15 pages.

Unlike Reuben’s condition, it does not wheeze. It sings. Oh my, how this book sings.