October 11, 2001

Plains Folk: Peace Like a River

Tom Isern, Professor of History
North Dakota State University

Confession at the outset: I didn’t expect to like "Peace Like a River," this new book by Leif Enger (Atlantic Monthly Press). I knew that the author was a Minnesotan, but that much of the action in the book was set in North Dakota, which stirred my anti-metropolitan bias: I thought, what are we in for this time? On top of that, Enger works for Minnesota Public Radio, an altogether laudable institution, I must say, but one so hopelessly genteel (oh so correct, and let’s not raise our voices now) that it seemed to me impossible one of its people could muster a voice with enough edge to write the plains.

Now for the story. In a little Minnesota town lives the Land family, headed by single father Jeremiah Land–a medical college drop-out making his living as a school janitor, but an extraordinary fellow. The oldest boy, Davy, is in high school, and his two younger siblings are Reuben (the asthmatic narrator) and sister Swede (devourer of western novels, composer of ponderous poems pitting good and evil on the western range). A couple of local bullies terrorize the family. Davy shoots them. He breaks jail and lights out for North Dakota, where the family has roots, having lost a farm there. The rest of the Lands come looking for him, taking to the road in an Airstream. Also on the hunt is a relentless but humane federal marshal. That’s the situation in brief.

Here’s where I have to admit I was wrong. Peace Like a River makes great use of geography, moving its characters through real and symbolic landscapes, and Enger nails them. He can write the plains. The Land family roots are in the Jim River valley (given a different name in the book). They go there for annual waterfowl hunts, and Davy goes there first as a fugitive. Enger knows the Coteau–he must have connections there himself. He captures the landscape with spare strokes, and he conveys its sense of rural abandonment. I don’t know how all this may resonate with eastern readers, but if you know this country, then you recognize the classic situation of a Minnesota family with rural North Dakota roots and enduring ties west.

Then the action jumps off, crossing that great divider, the Missouri River, and escaping to the Badlands. Here desperadoes hole up in isolated cabins, posses come calling horseback, and the family Land falls in with the remarkable Roxanna. What a fetching female character she is: capable, independent, but a provider and nurturer who would heal the family if given the chance.

I’m not going to try to explain the layers of meaning invested with this character in this landscape. You should absorb those from the book on your own.

Be prepared, as you do, to leave solid ground. There are mystic elements in Enger’s work. Jeremiah Land is twice airborne, and twice he raises the dead. The Lord or somebody is moving in mysterious ways. This sort of thing is becoming commonplace in Great Plains literature, but I can tell you, prairie folk, despite their confessions of belief in divine providence, have a hard time accepting it.

I’m thinking of the reactions of my students when I suggest that there are things we Euro-Americans fail to fathom on the plains. When I suggest that native husbandry of this land before European arrival involved not just fire and physical manipulation of grazing animals but also the movement of animals and management of the environment by other than physical means; when I suggest that 2001 is not the first time Euro-Americans have faced mystic warriors as an enemy, and that we might learn something from the Dog Soldiers of the Cheyenne; when in general I invite my students to be open to understandings not written, they know that I am nuts, and they stay with me only because they are kind, or because they want to see what might happen next.

When you get your coffee in a prairie café, look closely at the unshaven patrons around you, because the fugitive Davy Land is still at large.

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Source: Tom Isern, (701) 799-2941, tom@plainsfolk.com 
Editor: Gary Moran, (701) 231-7865, gmoran@ndsuext.nodak.edu 

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