Title: Peace Like a River Pdf A Novel
Author: Leif Enger
Published Date: 2001
Page: 312
"Leif Enger ... is a natural-born storyteller, and his novel moves in a current that can be poetic and slow or as tumultuous as whitewater rapids. This novel has the power to convince that, despite sorrow, human experience is a miracle of ordinary truth and extraordinary love." -Atlanta Journal-Constitution"A rich mixture of adventure, tragedy, and healing ... a journey you simply must not miss." -Christian Science Monitor"What allows Peace Like a River to transcend any limitations of belief and genre is its broad, sagacious humanity ... There is magic here, none more potent than Enger's prose."-Newsday
A Christian Science Montor,Denver Post, and Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year.
"Once in a great while, a book comes along that has such wonderful characters and marvelous prose, that you read it as much for the pure joy it offers on every page as to find out how it ends." -Denver Post
Leif Enger's best-selling debut is at once a heroic quest, a tragedy, and a love story in which "what could be unbelievable becomes extraordinary" (Miami Herald). Enger brings us eleven-year-old Reuben Land, an asthmatic boy in the Midwest who has reason to believe in miracles. Along with his sister and father, Reuben finds himself on a cross-country search for his outlaw older brother who has been charged with murder. Their journey unfolds like a revelation, and its conclusion shows how family, love, and faith can stand up to the most terrifying of enemies, and the most tragic of fates.
Loved this book - and I'm picky about fiction! For me to really like a book, it's got to feel real: dialogue needs to sound authentic, characters need to well developed & a mix of good & bad, as real people are. Likewise, I don't want the ending to be predictable, nor all happy or all tragic. I also prefer fairly clean language & no graphic sex scenes. (Not because I think those have no place in literature, but just for my own mental health.)So, you can see I'm pretty picky! This book met all my criteria. The one character that feels too saintly to be real is the narrator's father, but he's seen through the eyes of an 11-year old boy, in the more innocent early 1960's, so that makes perfect sense. (And more so, in light of the ending.)I appreciate how hard it must be to write an ending that the reader doesn't see coming, and that is neither too neat and happy, nor so shocking that it feels like a cheap shot. Again, this story delivers. I was truly surprised by several twists at the end, saddened by some of them and satisfied by others.The author also accomplishes a rare feat: writing about faith in a way that makes room for doubt, without judging those characters for whom doubt wins out.I look forward to reading more from Leif Enger.Wow! Haven't read such a wonderful novel, at this, in a very long time...... This novel, mostly set in the early 1960's and on the harsh northern plains of America, is a 'tour de force' of fiction. The tale, mostly narrated by the middle, seriously asthmatic child of a motherless home, is a saga of how a family will find their moral center, when tragedy comes to call. They also learn how to strengthen their familial bond, when they set out on a quest to find their errant brother and son, after two town bullies set out to avenge their dishonor, at the hands of the father of the story.In the process of seeking revenge, one of the bullies is killed by the oldest son. After that, the teenager sets out to flee his guilt, which he believes that his crime was committed in self-defence. But many in the small, N. Dakota town don't agree. So the boy flees and his family set out to find him, perhaps bringing him back to allow justice served.Along the storyline, the family faithfully follows their highly religious and decent father, as he takes the children and himself, deep into the Dakota Badlands. There they meet saviors, antagonists, murderers, government men, and magical moments that allow them to continue their search, against many insurmountable odds.The key characters are very individual and as quirky alone, as they are with one another. The reader comes to fall in love with one or a few of them. They learn to trust and love, as they become frantic to become reunited with their errant elder brother and son.If there is a genre of N. Dakota magical realism, this is a novel of that ilk. Magic happens, Miracles happen. Good and bad happen. Evil and good happen. Sadness and happiness are lost and found. Redemption and sinning happen.The language and character development are of a very skillful and high level that fully supports the plot, which is, at times, other-worldly. I couldn't put this book down. I loved it, since I've not read such a wonderful piece of fiction, in a very long time.A Unique and Clever Novel There is something about the writing style and characters I truly enjoyed. It's a very unique and clever story, told from the perspective of a 14 year old asthmatic boy, Reuben. It reminded me in some ways of Prince of Tides, another book I liked a lot, but with a few miracles from heaven tossed in, just for fun. I read a book a few years ago called The Tower, the Zoo, and Tortoise, which for me was unusual in that I found myself enjoying the book paragraph by paragraph - sentence by sentence - word by word. I felt the same way about Peace Like a River, which made it a very slow, but very enjoyable read. The combination of the writing style, the characters, and the overall narrative really worked for me. This one gets a big thumbs up.
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