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Leif
Enger
Leif Enger: All that's happened has been a complete joy, a delight. And yes, a great surprise -- I never cultivated commercial expectations for the book during its writing, so the lists and kind words and Book Sense honor were like an odd knock at the door -- we opened it, and there lay a candlelit banquet. But most things haven't changed. I did leave my job at Minnesota Public Radio; we paid off the farm, which felt remarkably good; but I still work eight hours a day, Robin still teaches, there's still school and music and church and the whole parade of chores to be done. The bedrock stays, and we're grateful for that. Your book is, as many have said before me, a wonderful read -- you succeed at making the fantastical seem believable, and the impossible, achievable. Does this echo any experiences you’ve had, or feelings you have, about life or human interaction? Probably a sense that we narrow our expectations as we age; that the field of possibility is much broader, and wonders more likely, than we allow ourselves to believe. This calcification is not inevitable. My older brother, a commercial pilot, abruptly decided about three years ago to learn blues guitar. He bought a G&L electric and a Fender Classic amp and set himself to practice 1,000 hours per year -- you should hear him now. Reuben, the narrator, is a proverbial good kid: smart, curious, fallible, devoted to his family, but not without the occasional urge to be a pain in the butt...so real! Did you observe your kids, or think back to your childhood with your brother, and draw on those people/experiences for Reuben? I had a great rollicking childhood, dragged along always by my older brothers and sister, so being a pain is something I understand and was always good at. My siblings were mostly patient, though [my brother] Lin sometimes took pleasure in my gullibility, such as the time after a rainstorm when we were playing in the driveway and he offered me a "giant chocolate chip." It sure looked like a chocolate chip -- Hershey Kisses weren't around then, but the item Lin held out resembled one, though unwrapped. I was probably seven and should've known better, given the dirty condition of Lin's hands, but I grabbed it and chewed several times before understanding it was only rich dark mud. Now it's our kids' turn; last night during the Twins game, Ty got up from the couch and fell right on his face because John, three years younger, had sneaked up and tied his feet together with a leather strap. You have to be close and of generous character to endure this kind of warfare, and I think they're friends for life. The character of Jeremiah is a spiritual, spiritually gifted sort who can perform miracles...except he cannot heal his son's asthma. What made you decide to have that be so? I never really thought about having Jeremiah simply heal Reuben; I guess if a person is an agent of the miraculous, then the miracles themselves can't be predicted or assumed -- otherwise that person would have no conflict, no problems. No hardships whatever. It would make for an easy life and boring fiction. Our natures are such that often what we want the most, we cannot have, at least without sacrifice; so the decision was made for me. Do you believe in miracles? Yes. Swede's cowboy poem was such fun to read, and the adventures of Sunny served as a nice counterpoint to the adventures of Reuben and his family. Have you written other poetry, and/or do you ever have the urge to? I haven't written much verse since Sunny Sundown, but gladly will if another excuse to do so shows up. My taste in poetry never grew past the age of 11, so my favorite stuff still rhymes and thumps and actually tells a story. I don't want to give too much away, so I'll just note that the ending of Peace Like a River was powerful -- it brought resolution and serenity in some ways, but was provocative and discomfiting, too. Was this ending something you had in mind when you started out, or did it grow along with the book? The ending unnerved me a little as I neared it -- it seemed risky, and I wasn't sure how convincingly it would read -- yet it also seemed inevitable, as though to do anything else would be untrue. The whole story, the character of Jeremiah, the miraculous events, had been leading to something; I was probably three-quarters of the way through when I realized what it was. What's interesting is that while it was the part of the book that should've been hardest to write, it came much faster than the rest, so I felt confident of being on the right track. Do you live among the landscape you describe in the book? Would you talk a little bit about how landscape informs literature in general, and your writing in particular? Certainly landscape helps mold the characters who inhabit it. A hard plain under relentless weather seems likely to produce quiet hardworking people who squint a lot -- it's the old laconic-cowboy standard, and there's truth to it. I'd say the winsome lakes and fields of central Minnesota, where I've always lived, have contributed to a general contentment and generosity. But geography's also an active exotic backdrop anxious to influence the story, and I like best when writers allow it to do so. In the North Dakota Badlands there were burning veins of lignite that captured the imagination of all who saw them -- Teddy Roosevelt came across them horseback in the 1880s, I saw (and feared) them as a boy of eight, these flameshot cracks in the earth, and the ranchers I talked to while writing Peace Like a River told stories of coal-warmed picnics in January and game wardens disappearing forever into the burning fissures. How could anyone not use such material? What's more dramatic than ground and fire and sky? When do you do your writing? I know that you used to write in the early morning before you went to work at Minnesota Public Radio. Do you write all day (and sleep a little later!) now? Early morning's still best for me, though that 5:00 a.m. schedule gets lost in the summer months -- it requires getting to bed early, which is difficult with the evenings so long and light and pleasant. At present, I'm starting at 8:00 a.m. and writing until around 5:00 p.m.; but once autumn comes, and school starts, and it's dark soon after supper, then it's back to early coffee. You've been touring for the book -- how has that been going? Did you have expectations that were met (or not) in terms of the response you got, how tired it made you, how many times you had to write your name, and so on? Robin and the boys came along for most of the traveling -- we enjoyed the long drives across the Great Plains and down the western coastline, and people very graciously came out for the events. It's tiring, as you suggest, but also wonderful -- we made many friends among booksellers and readers, and were shown hospitality day after day. What surprised me most was the generosity of audiences and the energy and curiosity they brought to the readings. We needed that energy -- in one stretch we drove 10,000 miles in 31 days. The book has been optioned for a movie, yes? Will you be writing the screenplay? Have you been to Hollywood? The book's been optioned and a screenplay is under construction, though I'm not writing it; nor have I visited Hollywood -- though, like most Midwestern tourists, I intend to someday. Are you working on another book, or any other projects, at the moment? I'm writing a novel set in 1916 about an old train-robber working to win back the wife he abandoned long before. Will you tell us a little bit about your previous books, written with your brother? They're mysteries about a former major-league ballplayer who's gone into reclusive retirement in the north woods. Both of us love baseball, and we wrote the books in the belief that crime was an easy and lucrative genre to break into, which turned out to be mistaken. We wrote six novels, published five, and stopped from exhaustion and sinking hopes; but the collaboration itself was tremendous fun, and Lin taught me more than anyone about how stories work, and their editing and pacing. Do you have a favorite bookstore? Rainy Days Bookstore[1], in Nisswa, Minnesota -- Suzy Turcotte is a faithful friend from the mystery-novel years, and one of those booksellers with a kind of prescience about her customers' wants. What are you reading now? What do you read to your kids? What books would you recommend to our readers? Elmore Leonard used to write westerns, and he was so good at them I wish he'd do a few more. "Valdez is Coming" is my favorite of these, but I just picked up a reprint of "The Law at Randado" and that was good too. Mark Dunn has a new novel coming out this fall, "Welcome to Higby", which is very funny, in the vein of James Wilcox, and I've recently read Larry McMurtry's book "Roads," which was like eating stick candy. David Nasaw's biography of William Hearst, Martin Amis' memoir "Experience," and Asa Mercer's "Banditti of the Plains," about the Johnson County War, are all fascinating.
Search for all of Leif Enger's books on BookSense.com [1] Rainy Days Bookstore: 25491 Main Street, Nisswa, MN Phone: (218)963-4891 Email: rainyday@uslink.net Peace Like
a River was the No. 1 Book
Sense 76 Pick in Sept./Oct. 2001: Author photo by Don Enger Further Reading:
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