Pun Salad

I was enticed into checking out Leif Enger's 2001 novel, Peace Like a River, by an article in the September issue of National Review, "What It Means to Be a Man" by Christopher J. Scalia (probably paywalled). It's serious literary fiction, which I usually avoid, but I can't deny the author's skill and the book's power. The pages definitely get turned.

It opens in rural Minnesota of the early 1960s. The narrator is 11-year-old Reuben Land, a good, very observant, kid with a nasty case of asthma. The family is headed by father Jeremiah, a janitor at the local school. (Mom has taken a powder.) There's an older brother, Davy, and a younger sister, the very precocious Swede.

And (oh yeah) Jeremiah performs Jesus-style miracles now and again.

But conflict begins when Jeremiah rescues a young girl from getting raped by a couple of local goons. No miracles necessary, just his broom handle, used to pummel the miscreants. This (unfortunately) leads to the Land family becoming the target of retribution, which (in turn) leads to even more violence, and some serious legal trouble for Davy. Who goes on the lam off to the Badlands of North Dakota. And soon after, Jeremiah, Reuben, and Swede set off after him.

The novel is very dense, filled with (um) "colorful" characters, and (very) unexpected plot twists. And there's also some genuinely funny bits, amidst all the grimness of the main plot.