Why You Should Meet Your Literary Heroes.

They almost always surpass your expectations.

Meeting Leif Enger, a literary hero of mine.

I read Peace Like A River late, almost ten years after it published. This is normal for me. I often buy books only to promptly not read them. There is an entire shelf in my office that contains books that I bought but am not ready to read yet. (I just counted and there are over 130 novels patiently waiting for my attention). I find that the waiting is where the reading magic truly lies. When I pull a book off the shelf, I know that it is finally time. That I am ready for the story.

Which brings me back to Peace Like A River. The fact that it has sold over a million copies is proof that I am not alone in feeling irrationally attached to that story. It was such a reading experience that I marveled at the story and descriptions—particularly how how Leif Enger used “paisley” as a verb. How frost “paisleyed” across a gun barrel. And the characters? I still think about them. Rueben and Swede in particular. They are real to me. And I love them the way that I love my friends in real life.

So of course I bought Enger’s sophomore novel, So Brave, Young, and Handsome, when it published in 2008. And then Virgil Wander in 2018. It will not surprise you to learn that I did not read them immediately. It might surprise you to learn that I still have not read them. However, when I learned that Enger had a novel coming out this spring—titled I Cheerfully Refuse—I wrote to his editor and begged for an early copy. Much to my delight, she sent me the book right away.

I began reading it that afternoon and was in love by the end of the first sentence:

“Here at the Beginning it must be said that the End was on everyone’s mind.”

I’d barely begun the novel before Abby (my sister, and our cohort here at The Book Tide) swiped it off my coffee table. She finished it before I could and immediately declared it her favorite Enger novel to date. So we trotted ourselves off to Parnassus Books on a Thursday night in April to hear him speak and get signed finished copies of our own.

I only panicked once—in the parking lot—when I remembered that old adage about meeting your heroes:

Don’t do it, they say.

You’ll only be disappointed, they say.

I am happy to report that “they” are wrong.

You should absolutely meet your heroes.

Leif Enger was everything I expected him to be. Smart. Funny. Engaging. Not just a brilliant writer, but a great reader as well. Generous with his stories. And even more generous with his time. The signing line was over an hour and none of us minded the wait.

Even this was a gift because it helped me understand something that I have been wrestling with since my own book tour this spring. I couldn’t understand why anyone would wait so long just to have me sign their copies of The Frozen River. But on that Thursday night in April I realized that I just wanted to tell Leif Enger how much his stories mean to me. I wanted to tell him how much I love Rueben and Swede and Rainey and Lark. I wanted to tell him that I am convinced that they are real people living in the world. That I miss them. Getting the books personalized was just a bonus. Had I not stood in that line I would have never had the chance to do for him what so many people did for me over the last few months.

When I got home I put Peace Like A River and I Cheerfully Refuse on the top shelf in my office—my “keeper” shelf. It’s the permanent home for the books that I love most. And then I returned So Brave, Young, and Handsome and Virgil Wander to my to-be-read shelf where they will wait their turn. At some point I will look at those spines and know the time has come. I have so much to look forward to.

So yes, you should absolutely meet your literary heroes. Do it for yourself. But maybe do it for them as well? 

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