For an author who has lived in Minnesota his entire life, Leif Enger takes a keen interest in stories of exile. He made a splash with his debut novel, Peace Like a River (2001), which sold over one million copies. The story follows a miracle-working janitor and two of his young children (one beset with asthma) fleeing the law and pursuing his oldest son. His next novel, So Brave, Young, and Handsome (2008), traces the journey of Monte Becket, whose desire for absolution leads him away from home in the hopes he can return a new man. And Virgil Wander (2018) tells the story of a man exiled from his own mind after experiencing a car crash and witnessing the return of a prodigal. All these novels circle around themes of exile, guilt, journeying, and the desire and difficulty of being at home. Enger’s most recent novel, I Cheerfully Refuse (2024), tells the same tale, with a post-apocalyptic twist.

Readers will find a murkier world than they may be used to in Enger’s novels, but this only matches the troubled world in which we find ourselves.