Month: September 2025

This morning I finished reading Peace Like a River, the debut novel by Leif Enger. While he has written plenty since then, I find it quite notable that this is his first published work. The most important thing I can say about this novel (other than that I recommend it wholeheartedly!) is that it is truly beautiful. Enger’s prose is both gorgeous and reserved. He employs metaphors and foreshadowing with masterful precision. When you reach the novel’s conclusion, there’s a bittersweet sadness at finishing, but also a profound revelation—suddenly all those literary devices click into place with perfect clarity.

As a writer myself, I must admit that reading this book fills me with both inspiration and a touch of envy for my own inability to craft a story of such depth and beauty.

The Story and Its Heart

Reuben Land serves as our narrator and, as it turns out, embodies the very soul of the story. His life begins with a miracle: born nearly dead, he survives only when his father Jeremiah holds the “clay child wrapped in a canvas coat” and commands in a steady voice, “Reuben Land, in the name of the living God I am telling you to breathe.”

Breathe Reuben does, but throughout the story he never breathes easily, severely hampered by asthma. His father Jeremiah becomes his hero, and as Reuben notes with characteristic insight: “there’s nothing as lovely and tragic as telling your friends you were just about dead once.”

Miracles Woven into Reality

Miracles occur throughout this novel in ways that seem deceptively simple and completely believable. This brings Gabriel García Márquez to mind, but Enger’s magical realism springs from the Gospel and prayer rather than from magic. These extraordinary events arrive in ways our postmodern minds can accept without question. As Enger reminds us: “Such things are worth our notice every day of the week, but to call them miracles evaporates the strength of the word.”

Characters Grounded in Grace and Truth

The characters populating this novel are strong prairie stock who never seek to impress or manipulate. The Methodist pastor, faithful and loyal, “was a great advocate of forgiveness, in which he put a lot of stock. Thrilling he was not.” Throughout the story, we detect a common thread of grace and truth—elements that cannot be easily separated from one another. Reuben’s precocious younger sister Swede, already an incredible wordsmith and writer, observes that “once torched by truth, a little thing like faith is easy.”

The Central Conflict

The Land family faces a bitter crisis created by their eldest son, Davy—incredibly capable but seemingly bereft of grace, his tragic, truth-seeking act of revenge poisons their lives. Jeremiah leaves his job and takes the family west in an inherited Airstream trailer, hoping to find Davy and, hopefully, bring him to repentance.

Davy’s fundamental problem becomes clear: “Davy wanted life to be something you did on your own; the whole idea of a protective, fatherly God annoyed him. I would understand this better in years to come but never subscribe to it, for I was weak and knew it.”

This confident self-reliance leads Davy through increasingly dangerous circumstances. His competence provides some protection, but forces him to live as a fugitive. The central question becomes: Will Davy ever accept grace?

The Journey West

Meanwhile, others who deserve nothing good experience mercy through Jeremiah’s hands. When the evil school superintendent who despises Jeremiah receives miraculous healing from horrible facial sores through Jeremiah’s gracious touch, Reuben struggles mightily with the apparent unfairness: “It was the fact that Chester the Fester, the worst man I’d ever seen… got a whole new face to look out of and didn’t even know to be grateful; while I, my father’s son, had to be still and resolute and breathe steam to stay alive.”

This gives us insight into Reuben’s heart—his breathing struggles dominate his existence and serve as an overarching metaphor for his spiritual condition, though he doesn’t understand this until much later.

Finding Refuge and Family

The Land family (Jeremiah, Reuben, and Swede) eventually reach the badlands of North Dakota, their Plymouth limping along while towing the Airstream. A powerful hand seems to guide them—one that communicates frequently and effectively with Jeremiah. Great miracles occur, perhaps the greatest being their forced refuge during a massive snowstorm in the home of Roxanna, a lonely woman on the wilderness fringe.

Roxanna experiences transformation through Jeremiah’s presence, and the children quickly see in her the mother they lost when their own inexplicably abandoned them. Though Davy remains at large, the family experiences stability and learns to find peace in the joy of order and purpose.

The Crisis of Faith

But eventually, Reuben reaches a dreadful realization: “Since arriving at this house, we’d had no miracles whatever.” He reflects on their journey and concludes: “And I thought, Without a miracle, exactly what chance do I have?”

Here readers realize that Reuben views miracles as cheat codes for his own life, failing to see how they’re actually preparing him to live and see differently.

Growth and Understanding

Reuben slowly learns to value prayer, growing into his father’s example, and realizes his need for repentance regarding harbored hatreds. Through painful circumstances of his own making, he confronts his serious shortcomings. A local sheriff “earnestly told me five or six specific things he found discouraging about my character. If you don’t mind I’d rather not restate them, but they were by and large true… I agreed with them all, as the broken must.”

Eventually, Reuben stops “whining about what’s fair, begging forgiveness, hoping for a miracle—these demand energy, and that was gone from me. Contentment on the other hand demands little, and I drew more and more into its circle.”

At last, Reuben learns that “fair is whatever God wants to do.”

A Powerful Conclusion

The story’s ending proves wonderful, featuring a powerful twist reminiscent of great self-sacrifice tales from literature’s past. Without spoiling the conclusion, I’ll say that in the distant years following these dramatic events, we see Reuben explaining to his still-elusive brother Davy what their father had done for him. When Davy challenges him to “Breathe… Let’s see you breathe,” we realize the incredible distance Reuben has traveled.

Despite experiencing great physical damage and displaying moments of cowardice and betrayal, Reuben has learned grace’s proper place as truth’s partner and has found repentance. His breath has been restored through great sacrifice, and he now possesses true life. The greatest miracle of all has occurred—but it happened slowly and collectively.

Final Thoughts

In my humble opinion, Peace Like a River stands as a modern masterpiece of American literature, weaving together themes of faith, family, sacrifice, and redemption with prose that feels truly joyful. Enger has crafted a story that operates on multiple levels—as a coming-of-age tale, a family drama, and a profound meditation on the nature of miracles and grace. This is a novel that rewards careful reading and stays with you long after the final page.

Have you read “Peace Like a River”? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Willa Cather has become one of my favorite American writers. After thoroughly enjoying her novel Death Comes for the Archbishop—the story of brave Catholic priests who journeyed from France to the American West—I picked up My Antonia with high hopes. It turned out to be an excellent decision.

A Portrait of the Prairie

My Antonia tells the story of its namesake character, the daughter of a Czech pioneer family making their home on the Nebraska plains. Like so many immigrant families, they’ve come to America seeking the chance to build something great. While Antonia’s mother struggles with instability and her father never stops pining for their old life, Antonia herself radiates abundance and potential. She captures the heart of the narrator, Jim Burden, who is four years her junior.

Jim arrives in Nebraska as a young boy to live with his grandparents at exactly the same time Antonia’s family settles nearby. They become neighbors in the wild prairie, where the expansive landscape dominates young Jim’s imagination.

Cather beautifully captures this sense of place and movement:

“I can remember exactly how the country looked to me as I walked beside my grandmother along the faint wagon-tracks on that early September morning. Perhaps the glide of long railway travel was still with me, for more than anything else I felt motion in the landscape; in the fresh, easy-blowing morning wind, and in the earth itself, as if the shaggy grass were a sort of loose hide, and underneath it herds of wild buffalo were galloping, galloping…”

Through Antonia’s immigrant eyes, we see a romance with the landscape and farmland that Cather suggests had been lost to many Americans. Even Jim, despite recognizing the land’s power, observes with typical American restlessness that “the only thing very noticeable about Nebraska was that it was still, all day long, Nebraska.”

The Immigrant Advantage

As Jim and Antonia grow up, they develop a close friendship built on mutual respect. But Jim recognizes the harsh realities Antonia’s family faces—living in a barely functional sod house while his grandparents enjoy a proper home, struggling with language and cultural barriers that require constant navigation by their more established neighbors.

Yet Cather observes something remarkable: over time, the immigrant families develop distinct advantages on the prairie. The Czechs, Norwegians, and Swedes possess a dogged determination to escape debt and educate their children. The older daughters move to town and send money home, helping their farm families thrive.

Initially, “The daughters of Black Hawk merchants had a confident, unenquiring belief that they were ‘refined,’ and that the country girls, who ‘worked out,’ were not.” This mindset sounds strikingly familiar today, echoing the way many urban dwellers continue to view those in “flyover” states.

But once these immigrant farm girls establish themselves in the city, they begin captivating the young city men with their unique advantages: fitness from field work, resilience born of struggle, and deep commitment to family. Their families ascend the social ladder:

“foreign farmers in our county were the first to become prosperous. After the fathers were out of debt, the daughters married the sons of neighbours—usually of like nationality—and the girls who once worked in Black Hawk kitchens are to-day managing big farms and fine families of their own; their children are better off than the children of the town women they used to serve.”

Two Paths, One Past

Jim grows up to become a lawyer, his path taking him from Lincoln to Harvard and back east. Antonia stays in Nebraska, marrying a solid Czech man whom she transforms into a successful farmer. While Jim struggles to maintain his connection to the land and his people, visiting old friends scattered across the country, years pass and he misses Antonia raising her large family.

When they reconnect twenty years later, their different relationships with the past become starkly apparent. For Antonia, the past remains an ever-present part of life, illuminating the future. For Jim, the past becomes something he must work to recover amid the distractions of his successful city career.

Two quotes illuminate this contrast beautifully. As Jim prepares to leave after Antonia’s first child is born, she tells him:

“Of course it means you are going away from us for good. But that don’t mean I’ll lose you. Look at my papa here; he’s been dead all these years, and yet he is more real to me than almost anybody else. He never goes out of my life. I talk to him and consult him all the time. The older I grow, the better I know him and the more I understand him.”

Later, during an extended visit, Jim takes a reflective walk and finds himself in the unchanged landscape: “I took a long walk north of the town, out into the pastures where the land was so rough that it had never been ploughed up, and the long red grass of early times still grew shaggy over the draws and hillocks. Out there I felt at home again.”

The Wisdom of Staying Rooted

Jim concludes by recognizing that despite their vastly different life trajectories, he and Antonia still share their past together. The difference lies in how they inhabit that shared history: Antonia lives and breathes within it, while Jim must fight to overcome life’s distractions to reconnect with it.

This is what I most appreciate about Cather’s writing—her recognition that the past forms the foundation of what we’re building, and that distraction from it can cause us to lose our way. Jim, like all of us should, recognizes that despite the wear and tear of Antonia’s hard life on the soil, she retains a level of greatness that his successful but rootless existence cannot match.

My Antonia reminds us that sometimes the greatest achievements aren’t measured in professional success or geographic mobility, but in the depth of our connections to place, people, and the continuous thread of memory that weaves our lives together.