………
ATLANTIC MONTHLY, 2001
(available in paperback from Grove, 2002)
THE FIRST MIRACLE Reuben Land experiences is the gift of life itself: At birth, he gasps for air. When his father, Jeremiah, commands him to breathe, his lungs fill with life-giving air. Miracles and faith are at the core of Peace Like a River, Leif Enger’s debut novel, a book filled with biblical references, stories of the Old West, and allusions to American literature and folklore.
From his perspective as an adult, Reuben recounts the story of his childhood in rural Minnesota in the 1960s. As eleven-year-old Reuben struggles with asthma, his younger sister, Swede, writes rhymed poetry about a hero named Sunny Sundown. Reuben and Swede share a love of cowboys and a passion for stories of the Old West.
Jeremiah, now a widower, works as a janitor to support Reuben, Swede, and their older brother, Davy. In spite of Jeremiah’s station in life, he continues to perform miracles in Reuben’s eyes. But when Jeremiah rescues Davy’s girlfriend from two attackers, the assailants seek revenge against the family.
Davy kills them in self-defense; nevertheless he is convicted for the killings. He escapes from jail and disappears into the Badlands of North Dakota. His family soon follows, with the FBI in close pursuit. Peace Like a River follows the Lands’ journey west and brings their story to a shattering climax.
During their search for Davy, the Lands find refuge with Roxanna Cawley, a woman who sells them gas and offers them rooms in her farmhouse in Grassy Butte, North Dakota. In Roxanna’s home, the Lands leave a lifetime of meager meals behind them. Roxanna takes the chill off the North Dakota winter and nourishes the family with warm hearty meals and tales of the Wild West.
Roxanna tells the Lands about her great-uncle Howard, a gunsmith and doctor in Casper, Wyoming, who baked cinnamon rolls almost every morning. When you entered his home “you smelled pastry and coffee and oilswabbed steel,” Roxanna recalls. Howard met and befriended the famous outlaw Butch Cassidy when Cassidy appeared on his doorstep and asked Howard to repair his revolver, which had been run over by a train. Cassidy’s revolver was beyond repair, but Howard offered Cassidy freshly baked cinnamon rolls and “after several rolls, the young man’s spirits lifted.”
Roxanna loves to bake, and Howard’s cinnamon rolls are a favorite. Roxanna teaches Swede to bake Howard’s recipe, showing her how to thin the frosting “with coffee and a little warm butter.” Roxanna describes the care Howard took with the frosting: “His especial pride was the frosting—he ordered back East for confectioner’s sugar, fifty pounds at a time, and he added melted butter and a potion of strongbrew coffee and a dried vanilla bean ground fine with mortar and pestle.”
The story of Roxanna’s great-uncle Howard’s cinnamon rolls has inspired many book clubs to re-create the pastries, including the Silicon Valley Book Club in California, the Lemmings of Rochester, Minnesota, and the Adult Book Discussion Group at the Richmond Public Library in Batavia, New York.
Author Leif Enger contributed his thoughts on the pastries to The Book Club Cookbook, along with his mother’s recipe for cinnamon rolls. We think her version would have lifted Butch Cassidy’s spirits, too.
Following is my preferred recipe for Mr. Cassidy’s favorite breakfast, the cinnamon roll. Of course, given the restrictions of his lifestyle he often had to make do with certain substitutions, sweetening the dough with molasses instead of honey, for example, but the rolls taste best made this way, and I feel confident they propped up Mr. Cassidy’s spirits on many a frosty Wyoming morn. The coffee was a closely guarded secret until my brother Lin stumbled over it while doing research; none have tasted this without profound gratitude.
If you set the dough to rise by 6 P.M., it’s ready to knead before bedtime. You may need to get up early to bake—these sometimes overrise—but cinnamon rolls taste best at 5 A.M., and Butch was known to roll out well before dawn.
¾ cup honey ½ cup vegetable oil or lard 1 scant tablespoon yeast 6 tablespoons ground cinnamon 2 cups granulated sugar |
2 beaten eggs 2 teaspoons salt 8 cups all-purpose flour Melted butter |
For the frosting |
|
Coffee 2 cups confectioners’ sugar |
2 tablespoons butter, melted |
To make the rolls: Bring to boil 2 cups of water, honey, and oil or lard. Allow to cool.
Dissolve yeast in ½ cup of warm water, with a dab of honey to hasten proofing. Put cinnamon and granulated sugar in a bowl and mix.
Place cooled water-honey-oil mixture in a large mixing bowl and add the eggs and salt. Add the yeast mixture. Stir in flour; you want a fairly stiff dough, so you may need to adjust the amount.
Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead well for 15–20 minutes, until smooth and elastic. Shape into a ball, place in a greased bowl, cover, and set aside to rise for at least 3 hours.
Punch the dough down and knead for a few minutes. Roll the dough out thin—it will make two or three large flats. Brush the top with melted butter, then lay on a heavy coat of cinnamon and sugar. Roll flats up into tight cylinders and pinch the edges together to seal. Slice cylinders into three dozen rolls, place on jelly-roll pans, and allow to rise overnight, covered.
Preheat oven to 350°F. Bake rolls for 18–20 minutes.
To make the coffee frosting: While the first batch bakes, set up a pot of strong coffee. Have a cup, then splash ½–¾ cup in a bowl containing confectioners’ sugar and melted butter. Stir until smooth and not too thin. Drizzle over the warm cinnamon rolls, or spread it on with a knife.
Yield: 4 dozen 3-inch rolls
Mary Gay Shipley created a true community bookstore when she opened That Bookstore in Blytheville (TBIB) on Main Street in Blytheville, Arkansas. Shipley describes TBIB as the “cultural center for a small town in Arkansas.” The store has a friendly, relaxed atmosphere, where browsers can sip a cup of the store’s Special Edition coffee or relax in a rocking chair near the woodstove.
Cookie Coppedge leads That Bookgroup of Cookie’s in the store’s back room. The book group admired Peace Like a River, a book Coppedge calls “a breath of fresh air.” “It was good for the soul,” adds Coppedge. “It provided such a good balance for all of the books we read that had at their core a crisis of faith. It was an unabashed affirmation of faith and it made a wonderful ending to the year’s reading.”
Methodist minister Robert Armstrong, a member of the group, proved very helpful to the group’s understanding of the novel. Armstrong explained details that casual readers might not have noticed, says Coppedge. “For example, the meaning behind the name of character Jeremiah Land. The biblical Jeremiah bought land outside of Jericho to encourage people to look beyond tragedies. Jeremiah Land is looking to the future and is hopeful.”
The nature of miracles and faith were key to the group’s discussion of Peace Like a River. “Reuben, the sensitive eleven-year-old narrator, is asthmatic and moves between life and death for the duration of the novel,” says Coppedge. “We discussed the effect of Reuben’s poor health on the narrative and traced the changes in his character as the narrative unfolded. He is a witness with a faith equivalent to that of the saints of old. As Reuben says again and again, ‘Make of it what you will.’ ”
Peace Like a River was a reading selection of the Tale for Three Counties program, which encourages residents of Genesee, Orleans, and Wyoming counties in rural western New York State to read and discuss the same book.
“Peace Like a River was a perfect choice, and people are still reading and talking about it,” says Leslie DeLooze, the librarian at the Richmond Memorial Library in Batavia, New York, who created the program.
“The selection for a Tale for Three Counties should have literary merit, address issues that deal with rural family life, appeal to teenagers as well as adults, and not be well known, and this novel met all of those criteria. At the time we chose Peace Like a River, it had not been published in paperback and was not yet widely known,” says DeLooze.
Author Leif Enger visited each county to discuss his novel, and the Adult Book Discussion Group DeLooze facilitates at the Richmond Memorial Library attended his presentations. “We were enthralled by his story of how he came to writing, and how he developed the characters in the book,” says DeLooze.
The group enjoys breakfast foods for their early-morning meetings, and when they met to discuss Peace Like a River, member Esther Marone made cinnamon rolls from a recipe she found on the Internet.
“Food is a metaphor in Peace Like a River, showing both the desolation of the family, such as the canned beans they eat, as well as the comfort provided by friends who care about them and prepare huge home-cooked meals for the family,” says DeLooze. “Cinnamon rolls are connected to the character of Roxanna, who becomes the mother figure to the motherless children and the wife to their father.”
