50 States of Literature: Wide Open North Dakota

Few contemporary novels better capture the beauty and cruelty of the North Dakota Badlands than Leif Enger’s Peace Like a River. Reuben Land was a still-born baby, brought back to life by his father, Jeremiah, in one of many “miracles” he performs throughout the novel. Now 11 and severely asthmatic, Reuben and his sister Swede live in a 1960s Minnesota town, both devoted to the Old West and stories of Sunny Sundown, a rugged adventurer. When their brother Davy is convicted of manslaughter, however, the siblings’ notions of guilt and justice are challenged—and when Davy escapes to the Badlands, the family decides to follow him. Enger lends great detail to the “great empty” barns, “paintless and built of square-hewn timbers,” as well as the “snow ... hard and clean-shaven and the broken hills [rising] on top of it.” More than the civilization that has attempted to force itself upon the land, Enger captures the terrible beauty of that land untamed—generations ago, lightning had sliced a cottonwood whose roots led to lignite, and the result is a “garden of fire,” a maze of veined earth with “smoke and heat and sporadic flames” issuing from the cracks. Later, when Reuben sees the Dakota night for the first time: “Here was the whole dizzying sky above us. ... We were inside the sky.” Reuben is forced to acknowledge that every decision, whether good or bad, has consequences. There is no better setting for this realization than a land where the wilderness inspires not only awed romance, but also a cosmic sense of fear and danger.