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.  

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