Peace Like a River--a story worth reading.

For the majority of my reading I'm torn between two poles. I can read something readable and enjoyable, but of no lasting consequence (i.e. pop fiction and Christianesque fiction) or I can read something serious, thought-provoking and painful (i.e. Pilgrim's Progress and Faulkner). I guess most reading is like most food: good or good-for-you. Peace Like a River by Leif Enger manages to bridge the gap between these two poles, creating some readable, seriously enjoyable, and thought-provoking fiction. I suppose if Peace Like a River were food, it'd be Citrus Salmon with Pineapple Orange Salsa.

The plot line is pretty far out there. Far enough that when I first came across the book and read the teaser paragraph, I dismissed it. After reading the book, the extraordinariness of the book became one of the things I loved about it. In fact the narrator's purpose is to serve as a witness to the miraculous. As he says several times in the book:
"Is there a single person on whom I can press belief?
No sir.
All I can do is say, Here's how it went. Here's what I saw.
I've been there and am going back.
Make of it what you will."

Ooo, I love that part. But you have to read the book to see how cool that part really is. I love the frank, straightforward approach of the narrator. No manipulation, no marketing. It's your choice whether you believe him or not. After all, he's speaking of miracles. And this is what he says about miracles:
"Let me say something about that word: miracle. For too long it's been used to characterize things or events that , though pleasant are entirely normal. Peeping chicks at Easter time, spring generally, a clear sunrise after an overcast week--a miracle, people say, as if they've been educated from greeting cards. I'm sorry, but nope. Such things are worth our notice every day of the week, but to call them miracles evaporates the strength of the word. Real miracles bother people, like strange sudden pains unknown in medical literature.... A miracle contradicts the will of the earth" (page 3).

Aside from the well-told story, this book was worth my time for several other reasons. The picture of a father frequently wrestling in prayer with someone alive and active was one treated carefully and not typecast as a fundamentalist freak show. Also refreshing was seeing a character committed to standing up for what's really right and wrong, not just legally right and wrong, and patiently training his son, Reuben, to do the same. This story lives and breaths faith, miracles, and an active and present God without having to pause for preaching. I did find the nine-year-old Shakespeare-Stevenson-Homer-quoting poet who reads gazillions of westerns and understands poetic meter (and despises free verse) slightly unbelievable, but in a book highlighting the miraculous, how can I argue with a character's plausibility? Characters in Peace Like a River turn an unbelievable, crazy kind of belief into real, compassionate, and faith-filled life. I highly recommend it--that kind of life and that kind of reading.