Amazon Link: Peace like a RiverThe back cover reads:
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" (Connie Ogle, The Miami Herald). Enger brings us eleven year old Reuban 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 controversially 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, the most tragic of fates.
I'm not particularly religious, I don't believe in 'God', at least not in the 'go to church on Sunday's and say your prayers at night' type of belief. This book is riddled with miracles, real Jesus-as-our-saviour type miracles. It has a character who walks on air, a whole car and caravan being made invisible so as to evade police observation, a gas tank that never runs dry, a boy surviving a gunshot wound after he has been declared dead... and, you know what, I loved (and believed) every bit of it.
I didn't read this book from beginning to end in one sitting, in fact it took me quite some time because it's a slow book and not much happens in any great hurry, but each time I came back I settled right in and felt at home. Reuben is an adorable character. He's gutsy and young and vulnerable and real. His younger sister, Swede, is a novelist and poet, gifted with incredible insight and a vocabulary that puts mine to shame, and she's only nine years old.
Davey is the quintessential older brother: sixteen years old, fiercely protective of his family and those he loves. His honour lands him in deep trouble when he kills two intruders in the family home. His lawyer claims self defence, but there's history between Davey and the two young men, a history that unravels to reveal murderous intent.
With Davey in prison and their father out of work, things are looking pretty bleak for the Lands family. Until Davey busts out of prison and disappears. The FBI send a man out to interrogate the family, but he finds out very little because they don't know where Davey has gone. The situation enters a stalemate with the FBI man unwilling to let them out of his sight, and the Lands having nowhere to go and no way to get there. To quell her anxiety, Swede composes maudlin poetry while Reuban concentrates on breathing.
Miraculously, a local man bequeathes a car and caravan to the family, and a tank of gas that never runs out. Off they head into the barren winter wilderness in search of their lost brother and wayward son, managing to evade the FBI agent and local police as they pass through small towns.
When winter storms move in and the highway is closed, they are forced to spend a night off the highway with a widower, Roxanna. She's a friendly, ferocious woman who takes them in as her own. What was going to be one night, becomes two, three, more. They settle in, making a family for themselves but never far from their minds is Davey.
One night Reuban sees Davey on a horse at the boundary of the property. He braves the winter cold with his gummy lungs and meets with his brother. Here starts a series of clandestine meetings whereby he learns that Davey is holed up with a derelict outlaw, Waltzer, and his child bride, a brutal man with a sordid past.
Reuben is torn, bound to secrecy by his brother but fearful of the man who holds so much sway over Davey's safety. When the FBI agent, who by this stage has tracked them down, goes missing, Reuban believes Waltzer has murdered him and he's afraid for Davey's life. He tells his father who in turns tells the FBI agent and a posse is put together to hunt the men down. Reuban is dragged along and his guilt at betraying his brother is palpable.
The story takes a dramatic turn at this point and I won't give it away, but the ending is satisfying and rewarding, if not... miraculous. As Reuban says, 'Make of it what you will'.
Rating: **** out of five
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