ADVERTISER BOOK CLUB
Enger's 'River' might defy belief, but it's worth reading, group says

By Wanda A. Adams
Advertiser Books Editor

The Honolulu Advertiser Book Club wants you Here's how to get involved in The Honolulu Advertiser Book Club: Membership: There is no formal membership. Just read the book and participate in the virtual discussion by sending in your comments and questions. Our book: "Bel Canto" by Ann Patchett (HarperCollins, paper, $13.95) Reading period: Through March 28 To participate in the discussion: Write Wanda Adams, Books Editor, Honolulu Advertiser, P.O. Box 3110, Honolulu, HI 96802. Fax: 525-8055. E-mail. Or record a short comment at 525-8069, the Advertiser Book Club Readerline. Listen: To the "Sandwich Islands Literary Circle" at 9:30 tonight, KHPR 88.1 FM, KKUA 90.7 FM Maui, KANO 91.1 FM Hilo; or hear the program online, starting tomorrow at the URL below. If you have trouble finding the book: Please call Wanda Adams, 535-2412. We want to keep tabs on supply. Click here to experience the book club online.

A couple of weeks ago, I invited myself to a meeting of the Bestsellers Reading Group at Borders Books & Music in Waikele, which had chosen Leif Enger's "Peace Like a River," our outgoing Advertiser Book Club section, as one of their monthly selections some time ago. Michelle DeBusca coordinates the club, which has a dozen or so members and meets one evening a month. Though they had moved on to another selection, they graciously agreed to dip back into "Peace Like a River" for my visit.

Just to recap for those who haven't picked up the book: The story focuses on a family in the Midwest. The mother is no longer in the picture, the father, Jeremiah Land, is a loving but strange man whose life was literally and figuratively turned around after he was picked up by a tornado and put down safely miles away. Davy, the eldest son, is a distant character; we don't know him well. Our narrator is Reuben, a boy who suffers from debilitating asthma and grows up fast during the period of the novel. The youngest child is Swede, whose epic poem about the cowboy Sammy Sundown reflects the action of the book. After Jeremiah gets in the way of some high school toughs trying to harass a girl, they come after the family, particularly Swede. The violence escalates and Davy decides to take matters into his own hands — with a gun. He's arrested, he escapes, and the family follows him into the badlands.

Reader adds expertise

The discussion in the music room at Borders in Waikele, arced around the circular seating area like a beach ball at a rock concert. We started with Dan X. Hall, known to everyone as "Dan X."; he's contributed astute comments to our online Advertiser Book Club commentaries before (he noted the connection between Camus' "The Plague" and Geraldine Brooks' "Year of Wonders").

The Borders Waikele group has been together a long time and they know each other well. They were all eager to hear what Dan X. would say because he's often the one who pokes a hole in a book's pretensions, or see something others haven't.

He kicked off the discussion with an issue, one he thought would not be popular: miracles. Several inexplicable events occur in "Peace Like a River," including one without which there'd have been no book.

But Dan X. and others think Lief Enger made a mistake in building the book on these. They're not necessary, he says. They detract from the book's important themes, such as how young people mature and come to realize that their heroes are also humans. In the book, we watch the young narrator Reuben Land begin to realize how multi-faceted people are: no one all good or all bad, no one's position unassailable all the time, no one's love perfect. This, to Dan X., was the heart of the book.

He wasn't alone: A number of other book club members took issue with the place of miracles in the plot. But, without them, it would have been a very different book. If the patriarch, Jeremiah, isn't a man touched by God, don't many of his actions become inexplicable — even crazy?

Jeremiah, the father

Which brings us to another concern that this group had, whether Jeremiah can be considered a good father. Is he a man who has taken humility and turned the other cheek too far, so that his eldest son is forced to commit murder to protect the family? Would the family have even been in this fix if he had been a more worldly man?

Lillian Jaskey Lubag loved this character and pointed out that it was his commitment to good literature that made the children in the book so well-read and thus more well-rounded that you'd expect from children in such a small town. But others demurred, saying Jeremiah is the classic flawed character.

A fair amount of discussion focused around the believability of key parts of the book. This is a book that requires a fair amount of suspension of disbelief from anyone who isn't open to what reading group member Juli Patten called the action of "the guiding hand."

Bryan Chun said he was considerably more than puzzled when, in a pivotal moment, the whole family decides to head out in search of Davy, the elder brother who has become a fugitive, an outlaw. They have no idea where they're going. They just go, believing that somehow they'll be led to find him. Nor do they have any idea what they'll do when they do find him: turn him in? help him run? try to talk him into turning himself in?

Theresa Burke said the character of the elder son, Davy, was a problem. She didn't understand how it was that he could have laid in wait for the family's tormenters and in essence killed them in cold blood. He didn't seem to fit into the family, she said. It was as though he decided he had to be the father because Jeremiah wasn't going to be, or at least not in the way Davy thought he should be.

In short, the reading group didn't agree about Jeremiah or Davy or the miracles. But they did concur that this was a book worth reading: well written and enjoyable but also challenging and thought-provoking. And that's exactly what we hope for in making our book club selections.

More comments

Other comments from readers via e-mail:

" 'Peace Like a River' has delightful portraits of those particular American institutions of fundamentalist Christianity and its fellow triplets, violence and guns. I'll be honest with you: IMHO if a reader desires suspension of disbelief and wants to let go and let a book do its magic, 'Melal' (Robert Barclay's novel set in the Marshall Islands) does it much better."

"Whee, I'm worn out by all the "traveling" and action in 'Peace Like a River.' It's a book I would never have picked up on my own, so it was a challenge to read. While the previous books gave me a calming feeling with inspiration and hope, now I'm feeling a sadness at the world. After all Jeremiah's been through, why couldn't he just live and be happy with Roxanne???

"I figured out halfway through the book that Reuben's asthma would be cured (by some miracle), and I rejoiced when it did happen. Reuben had won a 'war with life.' As his Dad, who had given him life and saved his life, said at the beginning of the story, 'We and the world, my children, will always be at war. Retreat is impossible. Arm yourselves.'