I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger

I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger

NATIONAL BESTSELLER - A BARNES & NOBLE BOOK CLUB PICK - A career defining tour-de-force from New York Times bestselling, award-winning and formidably gifted (Chicago Tribune) author of Peace Like a River Leif Enger.

A rare, remarkable book to be kept and reread--for its beauty of language, its gentle wisdom and its steady, unflagging hope. -- Laurie Hertzel, Minneapolis Star Tribune

A storyteller of great humanity and huge heart (Minneapolis Star Tribune), Leif Enger debuted in the literary world with Peace Like a River which sold over a million copies and captured readers' hearts around the globe. Now comes a new milestone in this boldly imaginative author's accomplished, resonant body of work. Set in a not-too-distant America, I Cheerfully Refuse is the tale of a bereaved and pursued musician embarking
under sail on a sentient Lake Superior in search of his departed, deeply beloved, bookselling wife. Rainy, an endearing bear of an Orphean narrator, seeks refuge in the harbors, fogs and remote islands of the inland sea. Encountering lunatic storms and rising corpses from the warming depths, Rainy finds on land an increasingly desperate and illiterate people, a malignant billionaire ruling class, crumbled infrastructure and a lawless society. Amidst the Gulliver-like challenges of life at sea and no safe landings, Rainy is lifted by physical beauty, surprising humor, generous strangers, and an unexpected companion in a young girl who comes aboard. And as his innate guileless nature begins to make an inadvertent rebel of him, Rainy's private quest for the love of his life grows into something wider and wilder, sweeping up friends and foes alike in his strengthening wake.

I Cheerfully Refuse epitomizes the musical, sometimes magical and deeply satisfying kind of storytelling (Los Angeles Times) for which Leif Enger is cherished. A rollicking narrative in the most evocative of settings, this latest novel is a symphony against despair and a rallying cry for the future.

Leif Enger grew up in Osakis, Minnesota, and worked as a reporter and producer for Minnesota Public Radio before penning his successful debut novel, Peace Like a River, which received the Independent Publisher Book Award and was named one of the Best Books of the Year by the Los Angeles Times and Time Magazine. So Brave, Young, and Gorgeous, his second novel, was likewise a national bestseller, reaching No. It was a Midwest Booksellers' Choice Award Honor Title for Fiction and ranked #8 on Amazon's Top 100 Editors' Choices. He and his wife, Robin, call Minnesota home.