Staff Book and Media Recommendations

Peace Like a River

Leif Enger

Reuben Land, an eleven-year-old boy tells the story of setting out from their home in rural Minnesota with his miracle-working father and Swede, his younger sister, to find their older brother, Davy, who ran away after a crime was committed. (No plot spoilers here!)

As compelling as the plot is, the family members make for very interesting reading, too. Swede is the great intellect of the family, composing a long ballad with stock figures of western lore that parallels Davy’s hard path and the dangers he encounters. Her flourishes of wit and imagination are both precocious and naïve, and they soften what is really a dark story of crime, punishment, and spiritual searching in Enger’s rural, 1960’s America. (As a side note, Enger’s portrait of this America excellently depicts the dramatic differences between that time and the present day, differences that I did not even know existed, such as the still common use of horses as a means of travel among the most rural families in the Midwest.) As seen through Reuben’s awestruck and searching eyes, his father’s heroic profile is based on the grandeur of his faith and his profound humility.

Leif Enger’s Peace Like a River joins the ranks of Jayber Crow and Gilead as one of the great American romances of recent years. ~ Travis Biddick

Reviewed May 2014