Peace Like a River - Tapa dura

From across the Atlantic, a first novel from 39-year-old Leif Enger. Writing with a wisdom and insight beyond his years, this is at once a heart-warming and heart-breaking story of a family struggling to stay together in the face of adversity. Set in 1962 Dakota, it is narrated by 11-year-old Reuben, an asthmatic from birth. The family is headed by Jeremiah, a god-loving man prone to carrying out unexplained miracles, Davy the elder brother and 9-year-old sister Swede, their mother having abandoned them at an early age. Being a lowly school janitor, Jeremiah is picked on not only by the staff but by two local bullies, especially when he catches the latter up to no good in a locker room. The incident escalates into a vendetta between the bullies and Davy, ending in the bullies murder, as witnessed by Reuben, when they break into the family's home one night. Immediately arrested for their murder, Davy enjoys brief celebrity before being tried for murder. However, before the trial ends, he escapes jail and sets off on the run into the Dakota Badlands. The rest of the family follow after miraculously acquiring an Airstream trailer. Through ill health, cold and poverty they follow ever onwards, followed in turn by a federal agent hot on Davy's trail. Running out of petrol they arrive at Roxanna's gas station and it is here that Reuben eventually finds his brother and holds the future of his family and most of all, that of Davy. Running alongside this is Swede's remarkable rhyming verse about the Wild West and Sunny Sundown, her Western hero, drawing parallels with Davy's fate. But it is Reuben's struggle to do what is best despite enduring life-threatening asthma attacks and his courage that shines through the narrative to make this a memorable read, one that will remain in the mind for some time after. - Lucy Watson

When Israel Finch and Tommy Basca, the town bullies, break into the home of school caretaker Jeremiah Land, wielding a baseball bat and looking for trouble, they find more of it than even they expected. For seventeen-year-old Davey is sitting up in bed waiting for them with a Winchester rifle. His younger brother Reuben has seen their father perform miracles, but Jeremiah now seems as powerless to prevent Davey from being arrested for manslaughter, as he has always been to ease Reuben's daily spungy struggle to breathe. Nor does brave and brilliant nine-year-old Swede, obsessed as she is with the legends of the wild west, have the strength to spring Davey from jail. Yet Davey does manage to break out. He steals a horse, and disappears. His family feels his absence so sorely, the three of them just pile into their old Plymouth, towing a brand new 1963 Airstream trailer, and set out on a quest to find him. And they follow the outlaw west, right into the cold, wild and empty Dakota Badlands. Set in the 1960s on the edge of the Great Plains, PEACE LIKE A RIVER is that rare thing, a contemporary novel with an epic dimension. Told in the touching voice of an asthmatic eleven-year-old boy, it revels in the legends of the West, resonates with a soul-expanding sense of place, and vibrates with the possibility of magic in the everyday world. Above all, it shows how family, love, and faith can stand up to the most terrifying of enemies, the most tragic of fates.