Peace Like a River,Leif Enger内容以及故事梗概

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  • Leif Enger's rhapsodic novel about a father raising his three children

    in 1960s Minnesota is a breathtaking celebration of family,faith,and

    America's pioneering spirit.Through the voice of eleven-year-old

    Reuben,an asthmatic boy obsessed with cowboy stories,Peace Like a

    River tells of the Land family's cross-country search for Reuben's

    outlaw older brother,who has been controversially charged with murder.

    Sprinkled with playful and warmhearted nods to biblical tales,classic

    American novels such as Huckleberry Finn,the adventure stories of

    Robert Louis Stevenson,and the Westerns of Zane Grey,Peace Like a

    River brilliantly incorporates the best elements of all these genres and

    ultimately earns its own prominent and enduring place on the shelf

    among them.Reuben Land was born with no air in his lungs,and it was

    only when his father,Jeremiah,picked him up and commanded him to

    breathe that his lungs filled.Reuben struggles with debilitating asthma

    thenceforth,but he is a boy who knows firsthand that life is a gift,

    and also one who suspects that his father can overturn the laws of

    nature.When Reuben's older brother,Davy,kills two marauders who have

    come to harm the family,the town is divided between those who see him

    as a hero and those who see him as a cold-blooded murderer.On the

    morning of the trial,Davy escapes from his cell,and when his family

    finds out they decide to go forth into the unknown in search of him.

    With Jeremiah -- whose faith is the stuff of legend -- at the helm,the

    family covers territory far more glorious than even the Badlands,where

    they search for Davy from their Airstream trailer.By the time the

    journey is over,they will have traversed boundaries of a different

    nature entirely.Marked by a soul-expanding sense of place and a love of

    storytelling,Peace Like a River is at once a heroic quest,a tragedy,a

    romance,and a heartfelt meditation on the possibility of magic in the

    everyday world.