{"title":"Books by Leif Enger","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9781472154507","title":"Peace Like a River","description":"\u003cp\u003eWhen Israel Finch and Tommy Basca, the town bullies, break into the home of school caretaker Jeremiah Land, wielding a baseball bat and looking for trouble, they find more of it than even they expected. For seventeen-year-old Davey is sitting up in bed waiting for them with a Winchester rifle. His younger brother Reuben has seen their father perform miracles, but Jeremiah now seems as powerless to prevent Davey from being arrested for manslaughter, as he has always been to ease Reuben's daily spungy struggle to breathe. Nor does brave and brilliant nine-year-old Swede, obsessed as she is with the legends of the wild west, have the strength to spring Davey from jail. Yet Davey does manage to break out. He steals a horse, and disappears. His family feels his absence so sorely, the three of them just pile into their old Plymouth, towing a brand new 1963 Airstream trailer, and set out on a quest to find him. And they follow the outlaw west, right into the cold, wild and empty Dakota Badlands.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSet in the 1960s on the edge of the Great Plains, PEACE LIKE A RIVER is that rare thing, a contemporary novel with an epic dimension. Told in the touching voice of an asthmatic eleven-year-old boy, it revels in the legends of the West, resonates with a soul-expanding sense of place, and vibrates with the possibility of magic in the everyday world. Above all, it shows how family, love, and faith can stand up to the most terrifying of enemies, the most tragic of fates.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43204437311666,"sku":"9781472154507","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781472154507_8f07d755-c878-4c54-81c8-ef20e38805fb.jpg?v=1786020417"},{"product_id":"9781804710821","title":"I Cheerfully Refuse","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eBarnes \u0026amp; Noble's April Book Club Pick\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAn Amazon Top 10 Editors' Pick\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eA Most Anticipated Book of 2024 from \u003ci\u003eLiterary Hub\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSet in a not-too-distant America,\u003ci\u003e I Cheerfully Refuse \u003c\/i\u003eis the tale of a bereaved musician taking to Lake Superior in search of his departed, deeply beloved bookselling wife. Encountering lunatic storms and rising corpses from the warming depths, Rainy finds on land an increasingly desperate and illiterate people, a malignant billionaire ruling class, crumbled infrastructure and a lawless society. Amid the Gulliver-like challenges of life at sea, Rainy is lifted by physical beauty, surprising humour, generous strangers and an unexpected companion in a young girl who comes aboard. As his essentially guileless nature begins to make an inadvertent rebel of him, Rainy's private quest for the love of his life grows into something wider and wilder, sweeping up friends and foes alike in his strengthening wake.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA rollicking narrative in the most evocative of settings, \u003ci\u003eI Cheerfully Refuse\u003c\/i\u003e is a symphony against despair and a rallying cry for the future.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55205854085493,"sku":"9781804710821","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781804710821_78dc91f8-d7b6-4509-a5e2-878ecfca708f.jpg?v=1786028203"},{"product_id":"9781472154484","title":"Virgil Wander","description":"\u003cp\u003eMidwestern movie house owner Virgil Wander is \"cruising along at medium altitude\" when his car flies off the road into icy Lake Superior. Virgil survives but his language and memory are altered and he emerges into a world no longer familiar to him. Awakening in this new life, Virgil begins to piece together his personal history and the lore of his broken town, with the help of a cast of affable and curious locals - from Rune, a twinkling, pipe-smoking, kite-flying stranger investigating the mystery of his disappeared son; to Nadine, the reserved, enchanting wife of the vanished man, to Tom, a journalist and Virgil's oldest friend; and various members of the Pea family who must confront tragedies of their own. Into this community returns a shimmering prodigal son who may hold the key to reviving their town.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWith intelligent humor and captivating whimsy, Leif Enger conjures a remarkable portrait of a region and its residents, who, for reasons of choice or circumstance, never made it out of their defunct industrial district. Carried aloft by quotidian pleasures including movies, fishing, necking in parked cars, playing baseball and falling in love, \u003ci\u003eVirgil Wander \u003c\/i\u003eis a swift, full journey into the heart and heartache of an often overlooked American Upper Midwest by a \"formidably gifted\" (\u003ci\u003eChicago Tribune\u003c\/i\u003e) master storyteller.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56301011698037,"sku":"9781472154484","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781472154484_94aeb1ad-1ecb-4725-a993-40b21e9d74cb.jpg?v=1786020416"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-leif-enger.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}