Showing Peace Like a River by Leif Enger

To the list of great American child narrators that includes Huck Finn and Scout Finch, let us now add Reuben "Rube" Land, the asthmatic 11-year-old boy at the centre of Leif Enger's remarkable first novel, Peace Like a River. Rube recalls the events of his childhood, small-town Minnesota circa 1962, in a voice that perfectly captures the poetic verbal stoicism of the Northern Great Plains. "Here's what I saw," Rube warns his readers. "Here's how it went. Make of it what you will." And Rube sees plenty.