The email my sister sent yesterday made my day. Leif Enger, author of Peace Like a River, has released a second novel. Since I’ve read Peace Like a River twice and am also a writer, Leif and I are on a first name basis. He just doesn’t know it yet.
Anyway, Leif is my favorite author at present. A few weeks ago, tired of waiting for him to write another book, I reread his first one. I wanted to see how the book had so captured me when I read it a couple years ago. As I read, I underlined words that spoke to my emotions or described places and events so vividly I could picture them.
But by the end of the book, and lots of pencil lead later, I still couldn’t identify what it was. Maybe the setting drew me in – southern Minnesota, Iowa and the western Dakotas – all regions of the United States where I have lived. Maybe the plot about a victimized family led by their father Jeremiah Land, a man of deep faith who treated everyone, even his enemies with Christlike compassion.
I puzzled over it for a few days until I figured it out. I loved Jeremiah’s youngest two kids. Reuben, the narrator of the story, was an eleven-year-old severely asthmatic boy. His younger sister Swede, was a precocious child who wrote reams of cowboy poetry. The events of the story are told through Rube’s eyes and Swede’s poetry by an author who remembers what it was like to be a kid. And that’s why I love this book. Leif understands how kids perceive life and articulated their point of view as few authors can.
According to the reviews of his new novel, So Brave, Young and Handsome, it also has Minnesota roots and a smattering of western poetry. But it doesn’t have Rube and Swede. They grew on me, and I’m going to miss them, no matter how good Leif’s second book is. I hate allowing new people into my life and then watching them leave.
Maybe I’ll read Peace Like a River again, to say good-bye to Rube and Swede. Then I’ll be in the right frame of mind to meet the characters in So Brave, Young and Handsome. I hope a few of them are kids who will enrich my life and then break my heart when we say good-bye.
I love that kind of book.
