Book Of The Month: Peace Like a River
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““From my first breath in this world, all I wanted was a good set of lungs and air to fill them with…””
So starts Peace Like a River by Leif Enger, as Reuben Land is born to this world, bearing the burden of crippling asthma with him. Reuben is pronounced a stillborn in the first few minutes of his life, as the doctor could not animate the newborn’s lungs. His father—a man of unfaltering faith and determination—point-blank refuses this declaration, and striding into the hospital room, smacks the doctor down and orders his newborn son: “Reuben Land, in the name of the living God I am telling you to breathe.”
Peace Like A River
Originally Published: 2001
Pages: 320
Available on: Kindle, Paperback, Audiobook
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Apparently, the newborn could not disobey such an iron-willed order and, breathing life into his little lungs in that moment, eventually grew into an endearing and perceptive eleven-year old, otherwise known as our narrator.
Reuben is born the middle child, with a 16 year old brother, Davy, who is more a man than a teenager, and a little sister, Swede, whose artistic flair for the dramatic and bossy gold heart greatly outstrips her meager age of nine years. Their mother leaves early in their childhoods and it becomes clear that their father, Jeremiah Land, is their lifeline, rock, and shield.
Set in 1951 in a small rural town of North Dakota, Peace Like a River is a story of bold resilience to faith, family, and hope. Jeremiah, a humble but iron-willed man, remains a source of inspiration and strength for his three children (and soon, the audience). He faces the world’s obstacles and his family’s own very unique set of challenges with wisdom and hope, doing his best to convey this to his children:
““We and the world, my children, will always be at war. Retreat is impossible. Arm yourselves.””
While we experience the novel’s adventurous events through the eyes of our eleven-year old narrator, Peace Like a River is as much about Reuben’s perspective of these events as his observations of his father's reaction to these same occurrences. Why? Reuben is convinced that where Jeremiah goes and what he touches, true miracles follow. (Take, for instance, the boy’s very birth). Reuben regards the world carefully and curiously from the shelter of his father’s wing, until a violent incident changes his family’s quiet life.
Their lives are uprooted and changed forever when Davy shoots two trespassers who had held a deep grudge and come with evil intent to the family’s home in the dead of night. With no regret, a steeled mind, and ready trigger finger, Davy guns down these men before the eyes of his younger siblings. From this moment, their world spins as they try to reconcile the ideals their father had instilled in them and the hostility that the world can unexpectedly rain down on their heads.
““It is one thing to say you’re at war with this whole world and stick your chest out believing it, but when the world shows up with its crushing numbers and its predatory knowledge, it is another thing completely.” ”
Davy is put on trial for murder, condemned to prison, and on the eve of his sentence, breaks out in high style, fleeing through the Dakota countryside and sending a mass of officials on his outlaw trail. However, Davy is not an easy man to find. He disappears, even from his little family.
“When did it come to Davy Land that exile is a country of shifting borders, hard to quit, yet hard to endure, no matter your wide shoulders, no matter your toughened heart?”
After a time, even when a FBI agent named Andreeson knocks on their door in pursuit of the young fugitive and joins the manhunt. Davy is not found and Jeremiah becomes uneasy in his heart. He packs their lives into a rustic mobile home, and they set out with no clear direction or destination in an attempt to find their lost loved one.
““So thoughtlessly we sling on our destinies.” ”
They trundle across the Dakota lands, fending off doubt and discouragement, encountering police brigades, dodging the meddlesome FBI agent on their trail, and landing at a small gas station owned by a lovely character, Roxanna. Along the way, Jeremiah is plagued with pneumonia and Reuben with his persisting asthmatic attacks. In one characteristic spunky moment, Swede takes it on herself to pour maple syrup (sticky and destructive) into the gas tank of the FBI agent discreetly to stall him as they make a quick getaway.
““Sometimes heroism is nothing more than patience, curiosity, and a refusal to panic.” ”
Peace Like a River is filled with heartwarming humor and moments of familial love, and readers hang on to the family’s deep bonds and adventures. Enger is an author who avidly captures meaning in small moments and delivers a beautiful story that captures readers’ hearts. Throughout pursuit and trials, Enger takes time to focus on how the Land family copes with disaster and change, and how their love is what gets them through these challenges.
“I remember it as October days are always remembered, cloudless, maple-flavored, the air gold and so clean it quivers.”
Peace Like a River is a quiet, strengthening novel that runs deeply, enveloping readers in the wisdom and warmth of steadfast hope and light; peace flows like a river around the challenges these characters face, on account of their strong merit, kindness, and belief. The novel is magical in highlighting the miraculous moments in everyday life, of showing the frequency of miracles that are not often realized as the miracles they are.
Leif Enger’s novel quickly became an all-American classic and top bestseller when it was published in 2001. A novel that is rumination, bildungsroman, adventure, tragedy, and romance all in one, it gained much critical acclaim and many literary awards.
““Let me say something about that word: miracle. For too long it’s been used to characterize things or events that, though pleasant, are entirely normal. Peeping chicks at Easter time, spring generally, a clear sunrise after an overcast week—a miracle, people say, as if they’ve been educated from greeting cards….Real miracles bother people, like strange sudden pains unknown in medical literature. It’s true: They rebut every rule all we good citizens take comfort in… When a person dies, the earth is generally unwilling to cough him back up. A miracle contradicts the will of the earth.” ”