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Overview
The first novel in ten years from award-winning, million-copy bestselling author Leif Enger, Virgil Wander is an enchanting and timeless all-American story that follows the inhabitants of a small Midwestern town in their quest to revive its flagging heart
Midwestern movie house owner Virgil Wander is "cruising along at medium altitude" when his car flies off the road into icy Lake Superior. Virgil survives but his language and memory are altered and he emerges into a world no longer familiar to him. Awakening in this new life, Virgil begins to piece together his personal history and the lore of his broken town, with the help of a cast of affable and curious locals--from Rune, a twinkling, pipe-smoking, kite-flying stranger investigating the mystery of his disappeared son; to Nadine, the reserved, enchanting wife of the vanished man, to Tom, a journalist and Virgil's oldest friend; and various members of the Pea family who must confront tragedies of their own. Into this community returns a shimmering prodigal son who may hold the key to reviving their town.
With intelligent humor and captivating whimsy, Leif Enger conjures a remarkable portrait of a region and its residents, who, for reasons of choice or circumstance, never made it out of their defunct industrial district. Carried aloft by quotidian pleasures including movies, fishing, necking in parked cars, playing baseball and falling in love, Virgil Wander is a swift, full journey into the heart and heartache of an often overlooked American Upper Midwest by a "formidably gifted" (Chicago Tribune) master storyteller.
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Details
- ISBN-13: 9780802147127
- ISBN-10: 0802147127
- Publisher: Grove Press
- Publish Date: August 2019
- Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 1 inches
- Shipping Weight: 0.7 pounds
- Page Count: 320
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Greek to Me by Mary Norris
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—Savanna, Assistant Editor
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Throughout life, I have lost many things. Many of those things cannot come back, and many of those things have been people. Every time I return to this collection, I am susceptible to a sense of longing. Every loss becomes current again, even the things I’ve recovered: The one that got away is getting away, the neighborhood I left is leaving, the dead in my family are dying. In my own poetry, I am open to returning to any point in my life, even the most heartbreaking. I love longing and reading about longing. Sharon Olds’ obituary for her marriage brings about feelings I share and enjoy taking notice of. I have found an abundance in loss, and I think, more likely than not, it can unite and bring about something else, or someone else—that someone else possibly being a better me.
—Prince, Editorial Intern
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I was 7 years old the first time I heard a pennywhistle. It was on a Chieftains cassette my mom played in the car. Something about that music—the plaintive whistle, the lumbering bagpipes, the sprightly fiddle, the pulsing bodhran—called to something deep in my bones. That same call sings in Maggie Stiefvater’s award-winning novel The Scorpio Races, a salt-soaked, wind-whipped ode to the way a fast horse at a flat-out gallop can feel like flight and freedom. The story is set on a small fictional island off the coast of Scotland you’ll be shocked not to find on a map. If you’ve ever experienced the bittersweet desire to visit a place that feels real but isn’t, the next boat for Thisby leaves on the first page of The Scorpio Races.
—Stephanie, Associate Editor
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I moved away from Minnesota when I was 11, so I can’t claim any ownership of its lakes and woods beyond my earliest memories. But almost better than those recollections is the Minnesota that lives in my imagination, and Leif Enger has contributed to that vision in no small way. Minnesota is a heavenly and forbidding landscape, this I know to be true, but I’ve never had a chance to understand the people who choose to live in such a cold place. Enger’s stories give me a little bit of that, and his third novel finds the members of a small town doing their best to cultivate some collective healing. The reader is looped in to their process through Virgil, who’s attempting to reclaim his life after a car crash. Like the kites flown over Lake Superior by an elderly character, the heart can’t help but lift.
—Cat, Deputy Editor
The Hold List features special reading lists compiled by BookPage staff—our personal favorites, old and new.