Book #14: Peace Like a River by Leif Enger

I feel like this book is one of those books I've seen sitting on people's bookshelves for years, which looks super familiar but which I'd never considered actually reading by myself. I'm really glad that I finally did. Enger writes a beautiful story about the Land family and their attempts to stay together even in the face of a huge tragedy. The narrator, eleven-year-old Reuben Land, writes about his family's chase after his older brother Davy, who shot two bullies who were threatening their family and then broke out of jail and ran away. Reuben, his younger sister Swede, and their father follow after where they think Davy went to look for him, and have a pretty big adventure across the Dakotas.

Enger's style is beautiful and the themes of the book are pretty powerful. I really liked how religious themes came across in the book. Reuben's father was portrayed as being very close to God, always praying in a very straightforward way and reading the Bible, and that enables him to perform miracles of the same style that we are familiar with in the Bible--healing, parting the Red Sea (of a style), walking on air, etc. But nobody seems to recognize or notice these miracles other than Reuben, who sees himself as a witness to his dad's miracles and shares them with us in a very matter-of-fact way (acknowledging how unbelievable they sound, even to him). I also loved how close their family was to each other. Davy running away and leaving them seemed unfathomable to them, even knowing what he'd done, and they couldn't let him just disappear, which was why they set off in chase of him. Probably the best part of this book was the character of Swede, though. She's an incredibly precocious nine-year-old who writes epic poetry and is obsessed with Westerns and can make a whole turkey in the oven by herself. She was so much fun to read about and to see the interactions between Swede and Reuben particularly.