Virgil Wander by Leif Enger

    I read this delightful book July 2022. recommended by SIL.  Great fiction, well written an different.  I have known people like so many of the characters.  It is 300 pages, paperback.  Set in the fictitious town of Greenstone, MN near Duluth, which is similar to many MN and Midwest small towns.  The town is slowly folding up, nothing but bad luck happens.  

Some of the reviews included as an introduction  to the novel express concisely the flavor of this book.  From the Minneapolis Star Tribune, "  You can be sure you've been expertly led into the realm of fiction where everything is possible and just because a thing is poetry as Rune tells Virgil, didn't mean it never happened to the actual world or that it couldn't happen still."   And this from Bookpage " ..a fast paced humorous and mystical novel about hope, friendship, love and the relationship between a town and its people."  

Page 1,  Virgil who has just been hospitalized with a 

Page 1 

concussion after an auto accident.  By page 2, we meet Marcus Jerry, who runs Greenstone Salvage and who rescued Virgil from the accident.  "Marcus is one of those weathered old reticent types whose rare comment tends to be on point.     We also learn about the neurologist who treated Virgil, "  "..a Finn named Koskinen with a broad decent face and Teddy Roosevelt moustache....He had the heartening bulk of the aging athlete defeated by pastry." 

I am not sure that I read Peace Like a River, also by this author although it sounds familiar.   He does not write many books but carefully does with excellence when he writes.   Rune, an old Kite flyer wanders into Greenstone.  he is looking for his son.  He did not know he had a son until a few weeks previous.  Yet the son, Alec has disappeared some say, although the others including his wife believe he died.  

Back cover

Abundance by Sara Jeter Naslund

Published in 2006, 537 pages in this updated version, paperback.  I have had it on my shelf for sometime and as visible on the cover found it used for only 99 cents.

 I'd read other novels by this author and enjoy historical fiction, so thought this would be a good read for me.  But my thinking did not gel with reality.    I struggled reading  through Page 254 before giving up.  I just could not get interested. The writing is good so it was not that but the long drawn out references to the  suffering about the Dauphin's lack of desire and  inability to perform.    Despite the reviews and my initial interest in reading about Marie Antoinette this wasn't for me. 

 It seems to focus on lamentations about Marie, a child of 14 sent by her mother the Empress of Austria to wed the Dauphin (next in line to become King) of France to cement the Austrian Empire with the French.   Marie does so  as an obedient daughter and immediately though relinquishing all her ties to home, she embraces France and speaks only French.  She will become queen as the Dauphin becomes King.  But the  central theme is that the Dauphin is impotent and they never become intimate, nor produce and heir. 

 Unlike King Louis XV, the grandfather of the Dauphin,  with  his mistresses, currently Madame du Barry  the Dauphin prefers to hunt.  Marie does everything she can to please him even taking up the sport of the hunt.  The King is very pleased with her.  Marie becomes close to the aunts and especially to the  Princesses.   Her mother has ears in the royal abodes through Count Mercy.

Marie seeks advice through Count Mercy excerpt 1

Count Mercy continued 

The reviews are great on this book, but it just did not capture my interest.