num_pages: 368
description: When Israel Finch and Tommy Basca, the town bullies, break into the home of school caretaker Jeremiah Land, wielding a baseball bat and looking for trouble, they find more of it than even they expected. For seventeen-year-old Davey is sitting up in bed waiting for them with a Winchester rifle. His younger brother Reuben has seen their father perform miracles, but Jeremiah now seems as powerless to prevent Davey from being arrested for manslaughter, as he has always been to ease Reuben's daily spungy struggle to breathe. Nor does brave and brilliant nine-year-old Swede, obsessed as she is with the legends of the wild west, have the strength to spring Davey from jail. Yet Davey does manage to break out. He steals a horse, and disappears. His family feels his absence so sorely, the three of them just pile into their old Plymouth, towing a brand new 1963 Airstream trailer, and set out on a quest to find him. And they follow the outlaw west, right into the cold, wild and empty Dakota Badlands. Set in the 1960s on the edge of the Great Plains, PEACE LIKE A RIVER is that rare thing, a contemporary novel with an epic dimension. Told in the touching voice of an asthmatic eleven-year-old boy, it revels in the legends of the West, resonates with a soul-expanding sense of place, and vibrates with the possibility of magic in the everyday world. Above all, it shows how family, love, and faith can stand up to the most terrifying of enemies, the most tragic of fates.
language: English
title: Peace Like a River
titlecomplete: Peace Like a River
characters: Rube Land, Swede Land, Davy Land, Jeremiah Land
genres: Coming Of Age, Book Club, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Novels, Adult Fiction, Adult, Family, Fiction, Contemporary
ratings_count: 88945
places: The United States of America, North Dakota
awards: awardedAt: 1009872000000
name: Book Sense Book of the Year Award
category: Adult Fiction, awardedAt: 1009872000000
name: Independent Publisher Book Award (IPPY)
category: Fiction - General, awardedAt: 1009872000000
name: ALA Alex Award, awardedAt: 1041408000000
name: Dublin Literary Award
publisher: Black Swan