Praise for I Cheerfully Refuse
"A book that reads like music, both battle hymn and love song for our world. A true epic—heartbreaking, terrifyingly prophetic, but above all, radically hopeful.” — Violet Kupersmith, author of Build Your House Around My Body
"A heart-racing ballad of escape, shot-through with villainy and dignity, humor and music. Like Mark Twain, Enger gives us a full accounting of the human soul, scene by scene, wave by wave.” — Josh Ritter, singer and author of The Great Glorious Goddamn of It All
Praise for Virgil Wander
“Enger deserves to be mentioned alongside the likes of Richard Russo and Thomas McGuane. Virgil Wander is a lush crowd-pleaser about meaning and second chances and magic.”—New York Times Book Review
“[Virgil Wander] brings out the charm and downright strangeness of the defiantly normal.” ―Wall Street Journal
“Enger is a writer to be appreciated by anyone who cares about words.”—Seattle Times
Praise for Peace Like a River
“Here is an author we can trust and who we are willing to follow anywhere. Enger strikes just the right balance of instinctive storytelling, narrative play and pretty prose.” —San Francisco Chronicle
“Book lovers inclined to complain that novelists don’t write gripping yarns anymore would do well to pick up a copy of Peace Like a River, a compelling blend of traditional and artfully offbeat storytelling . . . a miracle well worth witnessing.”— Boston Globe
“The narrative picks up power and majesty, then thunders to a tragic, yet joyous, climax.” – People
“Gripping… Filled with sharp prose and vividly realized scenes, [Peace Like a River] has the makings of that rarest commodity: the literate bestseller.” – The Minneapolis Star Tribune
03/01/2024
Lark and her husband Rainy, who narrates this novel, eke out a living on the U.S. shore of an angry Lake Superior. She runs a bookstore, even though few people still read physical books; he plays bass in a band and does odd jobs. They inherit an old sailboat from a friend and rent out their home's attic space as needed, including to a fugitive named Kellan, who overstays his welcome. A ruling-class figure named Werryck appears, seeking drugs Kellan stole, and his men kill Lark in their unsuccessful search for the drugs. Rainy, sick with grief and hounded by Werryck, launches his sailboat into the unforgiving lake, looking for escape and solace. After many hardships and adventures, he is captured and jailed on a hospital boat where horrible human experiments are conducted, but music saves him from torture, love for others saves his soul, and an unexpected mutiny frees him. Enger (Virgil Wander) tells a beautiful and quixotic story of love, loss, and the quest for life. His complex characters fight the age-old battle of good vs. evil. The story is compelling, terrifying and, in the end, satisfying. VERDICT This very readable and highly recommended novel's familiar setting in an unfamiliar future will resonate with all readers.—Joanna M. Burkhardt
With a tranquil steadiness and an ear for sharp poetic detail, David Aaron Baker captures a very American, or perhaps a very post-American, voice in this postapocalyptic tale of a man who witnesses a world unraveling. Books are banned. Food is scarce. And murders go unpunished. Our hero sails across the Great Lakes in search of old memories and a shelter in the storm. When he rescues a clever, world-weary 9-year-girl from the clutches of indentured servitude, he finds he can no longer escape an unhinged world. Baker captures climate change, petty dictators, and mindless torture with a sense of eerie gloom, but he is at his best reflecting the heart, humor, and humanity of a soul who won't give up hope. B.P. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine
2024-01-20
Amid the dystopian collapse of the near future, a musician embarks on a quixotic voyage from the shore of Lake Superior.
There’s both a playfulness and a seriousness of purpose to the latest from the Minnesota novelist, a spirit of whimsy that keeps hope flickering even in times of darkest despair. Things have gone dangerously dark along the North Shore, and likely for the country as a whole. A comet is coming that augurs ill, a pandemic has wreaked havoc with the public health, an autocratic despot and raging populism have made books and booksellers all but treasonous. There are corpses floating in the lake from climate change, and there are numerous instances of people swallowing something that kills them; the dead are generally considered seekers of whatever comes next (which has to be better than this) rather than suicides. As narrator Rainy sets the scene, “The world was so old and exhausted that many now saw it as a dying great-grand on a surgical table, body decaying from use and neglect, mind fading down to a glow.” Rainy is a bass player in bar bands, a jack of a variety of trades, and devoted husband to Lark, a bibliophile who runs the local bookstore. Before the collapse of the publishing industry, a cult author had been set to publish a volume with the same title as this novel, and finding one of the few advance copies has been like a holy grail for Lark. Then a copy finds her, courtesy of a fugitive pursued by the powers that be, and whatever tranquility Lark and Rainy had achieved is shattered. Rainy takes to the lake to escape the fugitive’s pursuers and reunite with Lark. He experiences a variety of hardship, challenge, and adventure, yet somehow lives to tell the tale that is this novel.
The novel’s voice remains engaging, and its spirit resilient, against some staggeringly tough times.
