Virgil Wander

by Leif Enger

Overview

A man seeks to rediscover his broken Midwestern community in a novel that “brims with grace and quirky charm” by the author of Peace Like a River (Bookpage).

Movie house owner Virgil Wander is “cruising along at medium altitude” when his car flies off the road into icy Lake Superior. Though Virgil survives, his language and memory are altered. Awakening in this new life, Virgil begins to piece together the past.

He is helped by a cast of curious locals—from a stranger investigating the mystery of his disappeared son, to the vanished man’s enchanting wife, to a local journalist who is Virgil’s oldest friend. Into this community returns a shimmering prodigal son who may hold the key to reviving their town.

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, Virgil Wander is a journey into the heart of America’s Upper Midwest.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802146687
Publisher:	Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Publication date:	04/18/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	359
Sales rank:	50,698
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Leif Enger was raised in Osakis, Minnesota, and worked as a reporter and producer for Minnesota Public Radio before writing his bestselling debut novel Peace Like a River, which won the Independent Publisher Book Award and was one of the Los Angeles Times and Time Magazine’s Best Books of the Year. His second novel, So Brave, Young, and Handsome, was also a national bestseller, No. 8 on Amazon’s Top 100 Editors' Picks and a Midwest Booksellers’ Choice Award Honor Book for Fiction. He and his wife Robin live in Minnesota.

Editorial Reviews

★ 09/01/2018
In his long-awaited new novel, Enger (Peace Like a River) takes us on one man's moving journey of renewal after his car skids on an icy road and lands in Lake Superior. Virgil Wander escapes with short-term memory loss, followed by visions of a dark figure no one else can see. For 25 years an unassuming resident of Greenstone, MN, a once vibrant town now in decline, Virgil works part-time as a city clerk and is the proud owner of the Empress Theater, which shows classic movies. Strangely, he feels the preaccident Virgil, self-effacing and apologetic, died in the accident; the vigorous new Virgil won't be pushed around. After almost burning down his kitchen, he takes on a curious roommate, Rune Eliassen, who arrives on a mission to find his missing son, Alec, a semifamous baseball player who took off from Greenstone in a small plane and never returned. VERDICT With an unexpected dry wit, Enger pens a loosely woven plot about plucky Greenstone residents working to rejuvenate their town but finding a bonus in their own renewed enthusiasm for life. Surprises and delights throughout; definitely worth waiting for. [See Prepub Alert, 4/19/18.]—Donna Bettencourt, Mesa Cty. P.L., Grand Junction, CO

Library Journal

…[Virgil Wander] is one of the most engaging protagonists I've encountered in years…The world of fiction has always rewarded the obsession, the fetish, and Virgil Wander is jam-packed with such eccentricities—baseball, surfing, beachcombing, fishing, classic films, taxidermy, Jeep Wagoneers. Reading the novel is like walking into your beloved uncle's bachelor pad: Every page is packed with curios and brimming with delightful nostalgia. But the nostalgia is well modulated…Every narrative thread is infused with the magical…Enger has endowed Minnesota's North Shore with a luminousness reminiscent of Annie Proulx's Newfoundland…Enger's first novel in 10 years marks him as a foremost stylist. His prose is rhapsodic, kaleidoscopic and—I'll say it—enviable. Even more enviable is the rare feat of writing a comedic literary novel that is also a page-turner…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.

The New York Times Book Review - Nickolas Butler

07/30/2018
The well-meaning sad sack who narrates this poignant novel from Enger (Peace Like a River) has just driven his car into icy Lake Superior when the book opens. Suffering from a concussion and possibly hallucinations, Virgil, the middle-aged town clerk and owner of a decrepit money pit of a movie theater, decides to take his emergence from the lake as a sign of rebirth. He’s aided in that endeavor by a mysterious, kite-flying Norwegian stranger named Rune, who has just arrived in the decaying former mining town of Greenstone, Minn., with “a hundred merry crinkles at his eyes and a long-haul sadness in his shoulders.” Rune is looking for information about a son he has only recently learned of, a gifted Minor League Baseball player who took off in a small plane a few years back and was never seen again, leaving behind a wife, “the tempestuous Nadine,” for whom Virgil has silently pined for years. Greenstone is one of those folksy Minnesota towns just a little north of the literary territory of Lake Wobegon, full of characters doing their awkward best, with a touch of evil added by nihilist screenwriter Adam Leer, who has returned to his hometown for nefarious if not entirely defined purposes. Enger’s novel gives magical realism a homely Midwestern twist, and should have very broad appeal. Agent: Molly Friedrich, the Friedrich Agency. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for Virgil Wander

An Amazon, Library Journal, Bookpage, and Chicago Public Library Best Book of the Year
Longlisted for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction

“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. And in these Trumpian times, isn’t that just the kind of book and protagonist we’re all searching for?”—New York Times Book Review

“Enger is a writer to be appreciated by anyone who cares about words. The book is full of little gems.”—Seattle Times

“Enger does a truly masterful job of synthesizing these various components into a compelling and easily digestible whole. Virgil Wander is a fast-paced, humorous and mystical novel about hope, friendship, love and the relationship between a town and its people.”—Bookpage

“[Enger’s] writing leaped out at me – it’s so easy and so vivid and so powerful all at once, and his characters are instantly real.”—Tana French, Vulture

“[Virgil Wander] brings out the charm and downright strangeness of the defiantly normal.”—Wall Street Journal

“It’s an expansive vision Enger has, peopled with pretty regular folks but with room for romance and redemption, the drama of the everyman and the everyday…You can be sure you’ve been expertly led into the realm of fiction where everything is possible.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Readers who enjoy tenderhearted stories seasoned with a dash of intrigue will find much to like in Virgil Wander… The novel's depiction of how broken souls can begin to mend is both thoughtful and moving. Greenstone may be a town shadowed by bad luck, but those who discover this gentle novel will consider themselves most fortunate.”—Shelf Awareness

“Part of the sheer joy of this book… is reading the author’s gift for language and metaphor… A colorful cast of characters complemented by the quotidian pleasures of small town life conspire to charm, welcome and teach us in that age-old way, through a story…So, be warned. You will fall for Virgil and the others who bring Greenstone to life.”—Mountain Times“The focus of [Enger’s] bright and breathing third novel feels mostly like life itself, in all its smallness and bigness, and what it means to live a good one.”—Booklist (starred review)

"Surprises and delights throughout; definitely worth waiting for."–Library Journal (starred review)

Praise for Peace Like a River

“You don’t see novels like this one very often. Peace Like a River reminds a reader of Kent Haruf’s Plainsong or even Norman MacLean’s A River Runs Through It. It’s got that pure American loss of innocence theme, that belief in and fascination with miracles, that insistence on the goodness of men outside of the law.” –Los Angeles Times Book Review

“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

“If you like a ripping good story told in robust prose that gives you goose bumps, latch onto this book – more than a novel of miracles, it is truly a miraculous novel.” –Seattle Times

“Enger has written a novel that’s boldly romantic and unabashedly appealing...it’s a journey you simply must not miss.” –Christian Science Monitor

“One of the most wondrous books I’ve read in recent years... [reminiscent of] John Irving’s A Prayer of Owen Meany, another novel infused with transformative magic.”–Charlotte Observer

“What could be unbelievable becomes extraordinary in Enger’s hands...Amazing.”—Miami Herald

From the Publisher