Swede, whom you know reasonably well by now, quit school in frustration at seventeen to write a novel. It didn’t publish, much to her later relief, but won her a sort of watchful uncle at a venerable New York publishing house. Now—after four novels, a history of the Dakota Territories, and a collection of poetry—she gets adoring letters from strangers. Her poetry book is flat-out perfect. It all rhymes! One ballad seems inspired by my own somewhat unique future. (My favorite lines: Drat, thought dying Lazarus, / This part again.) Others, yes, involve cowboys. Reviewers could only gape. One wrote that Swede was “setting verse back a century,” and “mining ground long ago found barren”; he called the book a “blazing song of innocence.” His was not the only review of its kind, but it was the one that vexed Swede. Against writerly protocol she returned fire, writing the reviewer a long and personal critique impugning his education, prose, honor, and masculinity. You poor man, it started, proceeding in such readable fashion the periodical printed it whole, along with the reviewer’s aghast rebuttal. There followed three or four additional exchanges, revealing my sister as the better wit, “though flawed,” she admitted to me with a rueful spark, “in the humility department.” Incidentally this public feud impelled Swede’s poetry onto several best-seller lists—alien surroundings for rhyming verse.
You should know that Jape Waltzer proved as uncatchable as Swede’s own Valdez. No doubt he went on to mischief elsewhere. Well: the farther elsewhere the better. Maybe he’s dead, prancing across some pockmarked landscape trying to keep the flames off, or maybe he’s just old, and a more sulfurous poison than before. Maybe he’s even old and repentant. Anything is possible. I only know he is apart from us and that, as Mr. Stevenson wrote of Long John, we’re pleased to be quit of him.
You should know that Andreeson did indeed perish in the Badlands, and that it was Waltzer who bludgeoned him and rolled his poor corpse into the lignite to hiss. Having this information from Davy I could hardly volunteer it officially, but there came a day when a couple in late middle age drove up to the red farm. The man came knocking, his wife stayed in the car. He had Andreeson’s high forehead but none of his confidence. We sat on the porch awhile. I was twenty-five then and far too young to impart the kind of comfort these people sought. The aimlessness and sorrow in their steps would make a terribly long story, but that is another’s book to write, another person’s witness.
Finally, you should know this. One Thanksgiving we were all of us home, all but Davy. Swede had returned from a writing residency in Wyoming, Sara from nursing in St. Paul; I was working for a carpenter in Roofing, putting up Sheetrock and a little proud of my big shoulders. We held hands round the table for a prayer of gratitude. When Roxanna reached Amen, Swede released my left hand, but Sara held on to my right.
Or maybe it was I who didn’t let go.
And Davy? Listen: There’s a small town in Canada, a prairie town. A place along the broad North American flyway where in autumn the geese move through by the hundreds of thousands. Since August Shultz died—following Birdie by two hard winters—I’ve gone north to witness that migration. The glory of a single Canada goose gliding in, trimming its angles this way and that, so close you can feel the pressure of its wingbeats—multiply this by ten or twenty thousand across a morning, and you too might begin creeping into frozen rockpiles before dawn. In any case, once I rose in the small hours and walked down from my rented bed to a pine-bench cafe, which in season is full of hunters sociably forking down eggs by five in the morning. Outside, leaves beat past in a wet wind. What I wanted was pancakes and sausage, so I ordered and took a clean cup and helped myself to coffee.
Davy came in the door before my short stack arrived. He wore a down jacket and new lace-up boots. At last, some decent gloves. He sat down. “You hunting alone, Rube?”
It’s not the easiest way to keep up with your brother. Some years he coasts into that town in my shadow—he’s the next man in the cafe, the voice behind me at the gas station. Some years he doesn’t show at all. Exile has its hollow hours. Some years I’ve noticed odd tilts in his speech. No doubt he has lived among accents, I hope in pleasant places, but he tells me painfully little. He asks and asks.
So I give him the news. He reads all of Swede’s work; he sends regards and comments. It drives her wild that he never appears in the midst of what she’s doing, but she knows he’s crazy about her. Twice Swede has accompanied me, hoping to see him, neither time with success.
Possibly he dreads what she might ask of him.
“You got awfully big,” he told me, that first morning, in the cafe.
So I told him what happened—about my foray into the next country, and Dad catching up with me there.
Belief is a hard thing to gauge where Davy is concerned.
“And he sent you back?”
I told him Dad didn’t exactly send me, but that I could go no farther. That it seemed a transaction had taken place on my behalf.
“Breathe,” Davy said. “Let’s see you breathe.”
Well, that was the easy part. Harder was describing that land itself: its upward-running river, its people on the move and ground astir with song. For just as that music stays outside the pattern I would give it, so does my telling fall pitifully short of what the place is. What mortal creations are language and memory! And so I sound like a man making the most marginal sense—as if I were describing one of those dreams that seemed so genuine at the time.
“Don’t you ever doubt it?” Davy asked.
And in fact I have. And perhaps will again. But here is what happens. I look out the window at the red farm—for here we live, Sara and I, in a new house across the meadow, a house built by capable arms and open lungs and joyous sweat. Maybe I see our daughter, home from school, picking plums or apples for Roxanna; maybe one of our sons, reading on the grass or painting an upended canoe. Or maybe Sara comes into the room—my darling Sara—with Mr. Cassidy’s beloved rolls on a steaming plate. Then I breathe deeply, and certainty enters into me like light, like a piece of science, and curious music seems to hum inside my fingers.
Is there a single person on whom I can press belief?
No sir.
All I can do is say, Here’s how it went. Here’s what I saw.
I’ve been there and am going back.
Make of it what you will.
Acknowledgments
I’m grateful first to my parents: Don Enger, who like Teddy Roosevelt believes in the strenuous life and in vivid narration; and Wilma Enger, who read us Robert Louis Stevenson before we could talk, and who writes better letters than anyone since the Apostle Paul. Both grew up in North Dakota and built into their children a westerly tilt and a love of wide places.
Lee, my oldest brother, and my sister, Lizabeth, have bolstered me without condition and given me examples of courage, steadfastness, and the pursuit of adventure. My brother Lin has spent years with me in the trenches of writing discipline and has gently taught me more of the craft than anyone else.
Thanks are also due to my editors at Minnesota Public Radio, who sliced away my adjectives for all those years and became my friends. Rachel Reabe and Mike Edgerly read early drafts; their encouragement was salt and light.
It’s my pleasure to work with Paul Cirone, who, flanked by the brilliant crew at the Aaron Priest Agency, has been tireless in bringing this book to an audience. Elisabeth Schmitz made me welcome at Grove/Atlantic from the first day; she edited these pages with surpassing insight, humor, and joy in the work.
At last, this book arose from family. My wife Robin heard every sentence aloud—openhanded with praise, she also recognized before I did when something went amiss. And without the attentive ears and irresistible ideas of our sons, Ty and John, poor Reuben would’ve been dull as a plank, and Sunny Sundown would’ve never saddled up.
PEACE LIKE A RIVER
Leif Enger
A GROVE PRESS READING GUIDE BY SUSAN AVERY
FOR DISCUSSION
1. As the nov
el begins—indeed, as the very life of this novel’s narrator begins—a miracle happens. Describe it. How does it happen? Who accomplishes it? Begin your discussion of this book by recounting the major and minor miracles that occur throughout. What role do they play in Peace Like a River?
2. Born with a severe case of asthma, Reuben Land, our young hero and narrator, must often struggle to bring air into his lungs. Throughout the book, Reuben is preoccupied with his own breathing, and the act of breathing functions in this story as a metaphor for life itself. How does Reuben cope with his ailment, and how is his character influenced by it? Provide instances where breathing takes on special meaning in the narrative.
3. Consider the details of the double homicide committed by Davy, Reuben’s older brother. Does Reuben see Davy as a murderer, or as one who acted in self-defense? Does he want Davy brought to justice, or does he think justice has already been served? What about the other main characters: how do they feel? And what about you, the reader? How was your impression of Davy—and of this novel—influenced by his actions? Discuss how the novel explores the idea of loyalty.
4. Peace Like a River is set mainly in rural Minnesota and the Badlands of North Dakota during the early 1960s. Like early American pioneers, or perhaps like mythic heroes, the Lands set out to rescue one of their own amidst the beauty and cruelty of the natural world. How does the Land family contend with this raw, uncivilized, and sometimes brutal landscape? Identify events or circumstances in which the novel’s setting contributes to its elemental or mythic quality.
5. Swede, Reuben’s imaginative, prolific, and precocious younger sister, creates an epic poem about a cowboy named Sunny Sundown. Talk about Sunny’s ongoing saga as an ironic commentary on Reuben’s larger narrative. What are the parallels?
6. Besides the Sunny Sundown text, several other outlaw tales, literary allusions, biblical legends, and historical asides are offered—by Swede or by Reuben himself. Identify a few of these stories-within-the-story, explaining how each enriches or influences the main narrative.
7. Discuss the character of Jeremiah Land, Reuben’s father—and the center of his moral compass. What are Jeremiah’s strengths, as a person and a parent? Does he have any weaknesses? Why did his wife leave him, all those years ago? And why does he “heal” the grotesque employer who fires him (p. 80)? Explain how the novel’s dual themes of familial love and ardent faith are met in this character.
8. Both during Davy’s trial and after his escape from prison, we encounter a variety of public viewpoints on what Reuben’s brother has done. Such viewpoints, usually presented as personal letters or newspaper editorials, are always steadfast yet often contradictory. What does Reuben seem to realize about the so-called “court of public opinion,” in light of these viewpoints?
9. Prayer is described in many ways, and on many occasions, in Peace Like a River. Reading this book, did you discover anything about the activity of, reasons for, or consequences of prayer? What larger points—about religion and human nature, say—might the author be making with his varied depictions of people at prayer? For instance, when remembering a prayer he said that included blessings for even his enemies, Reuben comments thus regarding Jape Waltzer: “Later I would wish I’d spent more time on him particularly” (p. 285). Why does Reuben feel this way? What power does he recognize in his own prayers? Discuss the impact prayer has on Reuben, and how it transforms him.
10. Recovering from a near-fatal asthmatic collapse, Reuben muses: “The infirm wait always, and know it” (p. 290). Given Reuben’s physical condition, and given what we know about his ancestry and the story at hand, what is Reuben “waiting” for? How is his waiting resolved? Can this analogy be applied to any of the other characters?
11. The final miracle in Peace Like a River occurs, of course, when Jeremiah surrenders his life for Reuben. But why, at an earlier point in the story, does Reuben observe, “Since arriving at [Roxanna’s] house, we’d had no miracles whatever” (p. 257). Discuss the truth and falsehood of this remark. How might Roxanna herself be seen as a miracle?
12. What does the character of Roxanna bring to the Land family? What does she provide that the Lands had lacked before her arrival? Over the course of the novel, Reuben’s attitude and his physical descriptions of Roxanna change. In what ways does it change, do you think Roxanna’s attitudes toward the Lands as a family and Jeremiah as a person undergo a similar metamorphosis.
13. In “Be Jubilant, My Feet,” the next-to-last chapter, Reuben and Jeremiah enter a world beyond this one. “Here in the orchard,” our hero recalls, “I had a glimmer of origin: Adam, I thought” (p. 301). Where exactly are Reuben and his father? What happens to them? How have these crucial events been foreshadowed, and how are they new or unprecedented?
14. Much of this novel concerns the inner life of childhood: imagination, storytelling, chores, play, and school life. Discuss the author’s portrayal of childhood. Do the children depicted here seem realistic? Why or why not?
15. Remembering his own childhood, author Leif Enger recently noted: “I grew up squinting from the backseat at gently rolling hills and true flatlands, where you could top a rise and see a tractor raising dust three miles away. So much world and sky is visible, it’s hard to put much stock in your own influence.” Does this type of relationship between the individual and the natural world appear in Peace Like a River? If so, where? Identify key passages or scenes where the characters seem inferior to the landscape, or even at the mercy of it.
16. Finishing his story, Reuben notes: “You should know that Jape Waltzer proved as uncatchable as Swede’s own Valdez” (p. 309). What do the characters of Jape and Valdez represent in this novel? Conclude your discussion by comparing and contrasting Peace Like a River with the traditional morality play—the symbolic drama (dating back to medieval times) based on the eternal struggle between Good and Evil.
SUGGESTED FURTHER READING
The Sky, The Stars, The Wilderness by Rick Bass; Wilderness by Richard Ford; Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier; Legends of the Fall by Jim Harrison; Plain-song by Kent Haruf; The Nick Adams Stories by Ernest Hemingway; Lake Wobegon Days and Leaving Home by Garrison Keillor; Animal Dreams and The Poison-wood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver; To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee; So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell; The Border Trilogy by Cormac McCarthy; Memories of a Catholic Girlhood by Mary McCarthy; Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt; Dakota by Kathleen Norris; and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.
Leif Enger, Peace Like a River
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