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Epilogue: Author Leif Enger came to town as a best-selling author
April 5, 2003
Author Leif Enger came to town as a best-selling author.
He left as a friend.
"This has been a special treat," Enger said in a few stolen moments after his final talk in Perry. "It's been a joy to see people embrace the book this way. It's not something you think about at 5 a.m. when you're writing."
Enger's Peace Like a River was the first book in "A Tale for Three Counties," a reading project organized by libraries in Genesee, Wyoming and Orleans counties.
The project wrapped up last weekend with visits by the author and his wife, Robin, to talks and booksignings in Batavia, Medina and Perry.
Peace Like a River, in which an adult Reuben Land looks back on a turbulent few months when he was 11 years old, is a story about the bonds that hold families together. It explores faith, family and justice.
But mostly it is just a good yarn.
Enger turned the reading rooms and auditoriums he visited into cozy living rooms.
"I think he is one of the freshest, most natural people I ever met as a stranger. I just became enchanted by him," said Florence Williams of Batavia, who attended programs in Batavia and Perry.
Through Enger's own words, here is some of what he had to say:
Are you Swede?
One of the book's most talked about characters is Reuben's sister Swede. The precocious 9-year-old is also the author's favorite character.
"Originally, the story was about three men: Reuben, Jeremiah and Davy," Enger said. "I was writing the early chapter on the family going to Minnesota and when Reuben jumped in the back seat there was Swede, already in the back seat under a blanket."
Are you Swede, asked a woman in Batavia.
Enger joked that no, he wasn't. Swede was smarter than he was.
"Swede is me in the way that all of my characters are part of me," he said. "There's some of me in her, but I had to go outside myself to find her. When I was 8 or 9 years old I couldn't hold a candle to Swede. But I know a lot of women like Swede."
"She's part of three women," he said. "Robin, my mom and my older sister Liz ... All three are clever and very honest and unwilling to say things that are not true."
Outlaw Jape Waltzer
Enger acknowledged the most difficult part of writing his novel was figuring out Jape Waltzer, the outlaw.
Enger saw Waltzer as a kind of Jesse Ventura -- "not so much for the voice," he said, "but the muscle."
But the idea wasn't working. Robin Enger suggested that the problem was in how her husband was picturing the character. She suggested he think of Billy Connelly, the Scottish actor who appears in Mrs. Brown, a film the couple had been watching.
"This happened about four or five times. Robin would offer an idea. I'd reject it outright. Then mull it over," Enger said.
One morning, a few days later, Enger began writing shortly after 5 a.m. -- his usual time -- and had the character developed when his wife woke two hours later. He solved his problem: Waltzer was like Billy Connelly. Enger shared the news with his wife.
"I was met with a certain silence," he recalled. "Then I realized, 'Oh, that was one of her ideas.' "
Characters in control
FBI Agent Andreeson, who Reuben describes as "the putride fed," was originally going to be the bad guy. Andreeson follows the family as they cross the Midwest in search of Davy.
"But the more I wrote about him, the more I liked him," Enger said.
The characters had a personal hold on the author, who often talked of them as if they were real people. As he wrote his story, he said he let "the characters decide on their own if they are going to do something."
One surprise was Roxanne. Enger said he didn't know she was going to become Jeremiah's love interest until she walked out to dispense gasoline -- on page 175.
"When the snow and ice crystals caught on her eyelash I fell for her," the author said.
It didn't matter that he was two-thirds of the way through the book.
"Yes, it does lead to breaking some rules. If you're writing a romance you don't wait 200 pages to introduce the love interest. You don't bring your villain in until you're almost to the end," he said. "But it worked. The story unfolds naturally."
What's next?
For Enger, another book is in the early stages. He is reading several books on the history and culture of old Mexico and while the book will largely be set in a rural environment (it's where he's most comfortable writing, he said) there will likely be some scenes set in a city.
"Everything is exciting to me right now," he said. "My passion is to throw everything into the story. A noble outlaw. Rhyming verse. An unlikely romance. But it's not a sequel to Peace Like a River."
But that doesn't mean the story of Peace Like a River has concluded.
The interest readers have shown in his characters reminds Enger of a comment by another author who said that works of fiction are never finished by the author, they are finished by the readers.
"When I first heard that, I thought it was nonsense," Enger said.
"Now I understand. Because the reader brings a big chunk of themselves to the story you are always part of a huge story."
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Lifestyles Section
Courtesy of Batavia Newspapers Corporation