Readers who enjoy tenderhearted stories seasoned with a dash of intrigue will find much to like in Virgil Wander, Leif Enger's (Peace Like a River) third novel. Populated with characters who range from lovable to sinister, it's a cinematic rendering of life in a small town that churns with complexity beneath its unexceptional surface.By the shore of Lake Superior, the town of Greenstone, Minn., is home to the novel's eponymous narrator. Virgil's near-fatal automobile plunge into the lake is only the first of several events--including a death by giant sturgeon and a near electrocution caused by a wayward kite--that suddenly make life there seem unusually dangerous. For 10 years the town prospered from taconite mining, but now it's best known for disasters like a frog monsoon, thousands of them "raining down from a dense black cloud," and the fact that Bob Dylan, born in nearby Duluth, once suffered two flat tires there. Things have gotten so depressed that the town, "full of people who could make you sad just by strolling into view," decides to name its festival "Hard Luck Days."
Employed as the city clerk by day, Virgil also owns the failing Empress Theater, which boasts a cache of classic films stolen by a previous owner. That's not Greenstone's only connection to film, as it's now the residence of Alec Leer, a "scandalous filmmaker and malcontent" and the son of the town's founder, who has an uncanny habit of being in the vicinity when bad things happen to people who have crossed him.
As he recovers from his car accident, Virgil invites Rune Eliassen, a Norwegian maker of exotic kites in shapes like an anvil and an overstuffed armchair, to share his apartment above the Empress. Rune has left his home north of the Arctic Circle to visit the place where, unbeknownst to him until recently, he fathered a son almost half a century earlier. That offspring, Alec Sundstrom, is most famous for the perfect game he pitched for the minor league Duluth-Superior Dukes and for his disappearance a decade earlier in the small plane he was piloting.
While all this may make it sound as if there's a manic quality to Virgil Wander, that would be a false impression. Virgil is a patient, observant storyteller, qualities that extend even to his account of the discovery that a homegrown terrorist may be plotting a spectacular bombing in Greenstone. The novel's depiction of how broken souls can begin to mend, as Rune uses his kites to help Virgil heal and to bring himself closer to Alec's teenage son, Bjorn, and as Virgil and Nadine, Alec's widow, tentatively discover their mutual affection, is both thoughtful and moving. Greenstone may be a town shadowed by bad luck, but those who discover this gentle novel will consider themselves most fortunate. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer
Shelf Talker: Leif Enger's third novel is the warmhearted story of how some inhabitants of a depressed small town recover their zest for life.