Virgil Wander: with that name, how can the protagonist be anything but a hero? Maybe a quirky, small town, injured in a freak accident hero, but a hero nonetheless.

I love Leif Enger’s descriptive prose and well drawn characters, and am so happy to have entered his warm but not sappy world yet again. I was not disappointed; the only let down here is having finished the book. Virgil, Nadine, Bjorn and Rune (and Rune’s unique kites) spring off the page with life.

While Enger is most interested in questions of humanity within and between individuals, he is the boss of the plot here, moving it along briskly. He weaves a bit of magical realism into his story as well, somehow pulling off the hardest magic trick of all: telling the truth through subterfuge.

I earnestly hope not to have to wait another decade for more of Leif Enger’s work.

Thank you to Grove Press and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.

I enjoyed this charming, character-driven novel set in a down-yet-not-quite-out former mining/shipping town in Minnesota called Greenstone, perched on the shores of Lake Superior, near Duluth.

The main character, the eponymous Virgil Wander, is recovering from a nearly-fatal car accident that has left him slightly "different" from a head concussion. Virgil learns that many townspeople thought he had died in the horrifying accident: "The message was that I should've died, but didn't. That was the sense I kept getting. Everyone was nice about it, but I was a living mistake."

When an old gent named Rune Eliassen comes to town from his home in Tromso, Norway, Virgil invites him to stay in one of the rooms over the ramshackle theatre that Virgil owns and runs. Rune loves to design and fly kites and soon many of the townspeople have acquired his passion for kite-flying, including Virgil.

But Rune is really there to learn more about his son Alec, a famous baseball player who had lived in Greenstone until the day he flew off in a small plane and disappeared, leaving his wife and small son to wonder what had become of him.

There are many other intriguing characters in this novel: the town's wealthiest man who often seems to be somehow involved when tragedy strikes; the down-and-out handyman who is trying to crawl out of depression and make a fresh start; the sheriff who may have had enough of the job; the drunken fisherman who may have been led to his death by a giant sturgeon--and that's just to mention a few.

The town itself is a main character as well, of course: "Greenstone is cursed. We had mines, but they shut. Ships used to dock, now they drive past. Our water tower comes loose and rolls over people, our congressman gets leprosy, Bob Dylan drives through and gets two flat tires." Could a festival called "Hard Luck Days" turn things around for the community, turning tragedy into a new beginning?

I was intrigued by the name 'Virgil Wander.' I wanted to know what significance that might have to the story. As Virgil himself says: "For a man named Wander, I'd spent a long time in one place." Is it a calling, as some have suggested? Combine that with 'Virgil,' the Roman poet who wrote about Aeneas's journey to the underworld. Could Greenstone, MN, be considered the American underworld? Is the Grim Reaper still waiting for Virgil?

Highly recommend this novel for people who enjoy engaging characters. There's a bit of drama tossed in at the end too that throws in some sparks.

I received an arc of this book from the publisher via NetGalley for an honest review. I will definitely look forward to reading more of Leif Enger's work.

Virgil Wander is a novel you sink into and savor. It is an invitation to visit Greenstone, Minnesota, and stay a while. The denizens are a quirky, fascinating bunch. They will lure you into their world and you really won't want to leave.
Virgil Wander is the middle-aged owner of the slowly fading Empress movie theatre. After a miraculous recovery from flying off the road into the wintry Lake Superior, Virgil is a new and different man. He sees the world in a new light and expresses himself with new words. Happily, the adjectives are slowly coming back to him so he can say more and more.
Life becomes more interesting for all of Greenstone with the arrival of Rune - a nearly magical creator and flyer of kites. He is also the previously unknown father of the town's most famous disappearance. Rune searches for scraps of information about his son and builds relationships with Virgil, Nadine, Bjorn, and the rest of the town.
Virgil Wander draws you in with a captivating narrative and irresistible characters. It is a slow and joyous journey, with no major villains nor heroes - just relatable, flawed, wonderful humans.
I highly recommend an extended visit to Greenstone. Get to know Virgil and the rest of the town. You won't regret it.

Sometimes it is important to look outside the scope of the strife that has permeated our lives. Leif Enger has done this. In his first book in ten years he has written a tale that reminds us of how to bring out the best in ourselves. Heart warming an humorous this is an important book to help us nurture our inner selves.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Grove Press, and Leif Enger for the opportunity to read this wonderful book. I love a book filled with quirky characters - add to that a small town charm and beautiful writing and you have this book. 5 stars for a great read!

Virgil owns an old theater in a dying town in Minnesota on the shores of Lake Superior, which is where he found himself one night after his car crashed through the guard rails in a snowstorm. Luckily someone was there to pull him out and he survived, with some reduced memory and language skills. But he awakens to a slightly different version of himself. He opens his heart and mind to those who want to help him and who he, in turn, helps.

The best part of this book is the writing and the feeling we get turning back in time to those small towns that have moved past their glory days but for the people who still inhabit them.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book - bravo!

One night the owner/operator of the Empress, a small movie palace in a small town on the edge of Lake Superior and nearly at the center of nowhere, took a drive down a snowy road and flew into that lake. The man who came out was not the same. He was not so different, but enough so that he called himself before the accident "the previous tenant". This the story about how he reconciled the two and reconstructed his life.
I liked this book. It was soft and gentle. Nothing of great import happened, but everything changed. People lived their lives and bounced off others in the small town, creating the improvements the town needed.
I received the copy of this book for this review from Bookish and an e-copy from Netgalley. That's how much I wanted to read it.

Librarian: As a librarian I feel like this is going to be one of those books that all of those of us who are professional readers love, and that we have an insane amount of difficulty convincing the rest of the world to even pick up. I mean, it's a gorgeous book. Beautiful prose, an interesting, if meandering plot, deep amounts of thought and symbolism. There problem is it seems to lack mass market appeal which might make it difficult to convince people to read. It's just too eclectic.
Reader: As I already mentioned, this is a beautiful book. Despite only having marginal interest in it going in, I found myself swept up in the story from nearly the first line. I did find it a little slow at times. The plot meanders a bit, spending time on details that can tend toward the trivial. But then, life os like that. And above all else, this is a book about life. The good, and the bad of it. It's a theme that speaks to the heart of who we are, and I enjoyed this wander through it.

“If I were to pinpoint when the world began reorganizing itself- that is, when my seeing of it began to shift - it would be the day a stranger named Rune blew into our bad luck town of Greenstone, Minnesota, like a spark from the boreal gloom." – Virgil Wander

The imaginary town of Greenstone, Minnesota lies somewhere along a remote section of shoreline on Lake Superior. A town that lost its luster and raison d'être after reaching the tail-end of a mining and shipping boom. Long-time residents of Greenstone weren't surprised when the mines closed and the cargo ships sailed away for the last time. Bad luck has always been around the corner; this was just more of the same.

Greenstone folks are remarkable people. They don't sit around wringing their hands waiting for the other shoe to drop on them. They just hitch up and help out the person currently caught sideways by the town's curse. Oh, there are the gossipers, the skeptics, the suspicious, the troublemakers, the confused - but overall decent folks that somehow manage to find purpose enough to stay in the dying town but lack the courage to leave.
So when Virgil Wander, their part-time town clerk and full- time owner of their decaying local movie theater, skidded off that icy cliff into Lake Superior and his airbag temporarily scrambled his brain, the town sighed, and added his woes to their infinite list of bad luck stories.

This is Virgil's story to tell. It's a story about rebirth and second chances. A story of love lost and love found. A story of hope, sadness, compassion, humor, and friendship that forever bonds a town together. There's a bit of mystery, danger, and intrigue. This is a story told in that stereotypical simplicity of the mid-West; little said but much meant. It's a complicated but comfortable story filled with many lovable (and some not so lovable) characters.

It begins the day Virgil wakes up in the hospital after his accident. He discovers his "storehouse of English had been pillaged" and his cranial gyroscope off tilt. He was most distressed to lose his adjectives but happy to find a few nouns and the essential verbs still there.

His first day back home at the Empress leaves Virgil conflicted. He knows it is his home but everything is off. Struggling to understand his new perspective of himself and the town in general, Virgil absentmindedly takes a walk-through town ending up at the abandoned waterfront pier.

Standing on the far edge of the pier is "a threadbare stranger [with] eight-day whiskers and fisherman hands, a pipe in his mouth like a mariner in a fable, and a question in his eyes". A brightly colored kite is tucked under his arm. The sad old man recently learned that years ago, while on a brief visit to the United States from Norway, he had fathered a child; a son. Returning now, he hoped to meet his son only to learn that he disappeared years ago and is presumed dead.

The two men, each lost in their own thoughts, chatted amicably. Out of the blue, Rune says, "Perhaps you knew my son? He lived here." Shortly after that, the wind rustled the water and the kite left Rune's arms to rise high into the sky; as time after time, Rune's kites will lift the spirits of the town folk during his quest to bring his son alive in memory.

Virgil will fare much better than Humpty Dumpty; he will be able to put most of his pieces back together again. The new Virgil has a bright future and grateful for that second chance.

As for town itself, no worries. The folks learned to face their "hard luck" head on and make lemonade out of lemons. As you flip those final pages and wave goodbye, you will do so with a smile.

Recommended reading for those days when you need a lift into imagination and magic.

Review Source: ARC from NetGalley and publisher.

"Virgil Wander" by Leif Enger, Grove Press, 352 pages, Oct. 2, 2018.

Virgil Wander owns the Empress Theater in the small town of Greenstone, Minnesota. He also works part time as the town clerk.

He is "cruising at medium altitude" one night and drives off the road into Lake Superior. He survives, but has some memory loss and language difficulties.

On the day Virgil is released from the hospital, a stranger named Rune Eliassen comes into town. He is visiting from Norway. Rune wants to talk to people who knew his son, Alec Sanderson. He didn't learn that he had a son until Alec's mother died, which was after Alec disappeared.

Alec was a minor league pitcher who only played two seasons. He then made neon signs. He was flying a small plane that disappeared 10 years ago. It was never found. He left a wife, Nadine, and a son, Bjorn. Rune needs a place to stay and Virgil shouldn't be alone for a few weeks, so Virgil takes him in. Rune makes and flies unusual kites.

The town is planning a big festival. Virgil is asked to convince a former film director to speak at the festival. This is a small town that doesn't seem to have much going for it anymore.

This charming novel is full of quirky characters. It doesn't seem to have much of a plot, until the end when everything comes together. This is a book to savor.

Leif Enger is also the author of "Peace Like a River," considered to be one of the top novels of 2001.

In accordance with FTC guidelines, the Advanced Readers Copy of this book was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This story is narrated by the character of middle aged, movie theater owner, Virgil Wander. When the story begins, Virgil has just miraculously survived his car sailing off the road into frigid Lake Superior and only lived because the local junk dealer saw the event and was able to pull Virgil out of the sinking car. Virgil now has a traumatic brain injury, with loss of memory, muddled speech and thinking, and no assurance he'll get back his past or his former self. In fact, Virgil calls his current self, tenant 2 and his before-accident self tenant 1 because that's how foreign this world and his body feel to him since his accident.

Everything we learn is through Virgil or through stories told to him by others and then related to us. This Virgil is kindhearted, quick to tears (as he is sure was not the case with tenant 1), generous, and haunted by visions from right before the wreck and of a man he thinks of as death. His town of Greenstone has been dying for a very long time and tragedy and bad luck abound. Yet the people of the town just keep on going and even have named their current yearly celebration Hard Luck Days. Most of the people in this tiny town look after each other and Virgil, as he looks after them, despite his current "new tenant" status. Into town comes Rune, the father of the town's former single A baseball player, who went missing after taking a solo flight. Rune, and his kite making and flying, bring the town together more than ever, adding a bright spot to each day.

But there is evil and darkness lurking and it's more evident whenever a long time town member comes back into town. As the book comes to a close, with the town and it's folks mostly looking at a brighter future, I do wish we could know more about Alec Leer, whose presence seems otherworldly and ominous. We only know what the new Virgil knows and what he tells us but I feel there is more than one story lurking behind this book. I thoroughly enjoyed meeting the people of Greenstone and being a part of Virgil's recovery from his accident and acceptance that things are different now, as he and the town's folk make their way into the future.

Thank you to Grove Atlantic, and NetGalley for this ARC.

Leif Enger’s “Peace Like a River” is on my greatest books of all time list. As I started "Virgil Wander,” I remembered why. Unger writes a beautiful sentence. Then he takes those sentences and twines them around each other into beautiful paragraphs. I’ve always wanted to know if these are *real* people he writes about. And if they aren’t, how does he make them so multi-dimensional and quirky with so few words? He knows his people inside out. And I wanted to bring these people home and tend to them. I yearned for the happiness of Rune, grandfather and kite designer, his grandson Bjorn, surfer and movie projectionist, and Bjorn’s mother Nadine, neon sign builder. Virgil himself has been damaged, but perhaps also saved by an automobile accident. With swift brushstrokes, Enger renders a village full of the unlikely. His use of adjectives is entirely undiminished

When I finished this book, I wanted to start it again. I’ll be recommending it to everyone I know.

Interesting story about the people living in a small town. There are a lot of quirky characters in this town and most of them are endearing..

I absolutely loved this book. Virgil Wander is a sad tale about an quirky man and the declining rust-belt town he lives in.

Enger's writing is superb, giving readers characters that will quickly feel like endearing friends they have known for years. The story itself is one of hope which will linger long after the last pages have been read.

This book is going to have a permanent spot on the staff pick's shelf at my library.

Welcome to Greenville, a small town on the Minnesota shore of Lake Superior that’s lost its mining industry, its baseball favorite son, its water tower, and almost its hope. Meet Virgil Wander, owner of the almost-out-of-business movie theater and town clerk. Meet Rune, a stranger-come-to-town who turns out to be the unknown father of the lost baseball hero, a maker of amazing kites, a man in search of the boy he cannot know. Mix in a great fish story, a few sinister characters, strands of love stories, and alll kinds of other things for an interesting tale of a small town coming to terms with the past, present and shaky future. Disjointed at times but intriguing.

'll admit I had put this near the bottom of my TBR pile thinking it was yet another novel about a middle aged midwest man dealing with love and loss and so on. Boy was I wrong. Virgil Wander is indeed a middle aged man who meets that description but he and this book is so much more. Virgil's plunge into the water left him with a TBI and a new understanding about his place in the small town of Greenstone where he owns the rapidly failing movie theater. The characters here are terrific, starting with Virgil, of course, but then there's Rune, who has come to town to find out about the son he had not known he had and who loves to fly kites. There's Bjorn, Rune's grandson, who loves to surf (quite difficult in Northern Minnesota) and his mom Nadine. Lily Pea and Galen, who wants to catch the fish he is convinced killed his father. There's the sheriff with a cat named Roger who knows how to open the car windows. Then there's Jerry, who seems bumbling but is more important to the story than you think. This is wonderfully written and so carefully plotted that you will find yourself bemused and surprised. There are small pleasures here and large ones as well. Thanks to the publisher for the ARC. I hope this gets the wide readership is deserves- it's not flashy but it's darn good.

Virgil Wander, the main character, owns a movie theater and lives in small town Minnesota. He has a driving accident where his car lands in frigid Lake Superior. After the accident, his memory and language are impaired, and life is completely new to him.

Virgil sets out to piece his life back together with information he can find outside himself. Through some quirky characters, he is able to fill in gaps, while he helps them revitalize their sleepy, bereft of business, but not of people, town. There are also side stories with the quirky characters that add intrigue and mystery like a missing husband/son.

Virgil Wander is a charming story about healing: restoring Virgil to his former glory while also restoring the town and community. The tone is somber and wistful. I wanted these characters to find happiness, for Virgil to regain his language, because I connected to them in a genuine way. They felt real, and their longing was relatable.

There were times I smiled at the happenings, some moments of humor and hope amidst the sadness, and those balanced out the melancholy. I did not want to leave my time in Greenstone. I grew attached to its people, especially to Virgil. That experience alone lets me know I was enamored with this story, his story.

Thank you to Atlantic Monthly Press/Grove Press for the ARC. All opinions are my own.

Welcome to Greenstone, a Minnesota town on the downslide populated by a host of quirky and utterly unique characters. This book is not about tight plotting or linear storytelling, and some readers may be frustrated by the meandering (can we say wandering?) course of the story. But those readers looking for atmosphere and a sense of place will find lots to love here, as the characters in this remarkable town are wild, weird, and completely unforgettable. Many of these characters are damaged, but muddle along as best they can. Virgil, who is recovering from a near-fatal accident, runs the faded Empress Theater, where the customers are few and far between. Rune flies incredible kites and searches for the son he never knew; lovely Nadine, a young widow (or maybe not) waits for her legendary husband's return. The town is a character in itself, infused with melancholy and magic, a heady blend that leaves a lasting impression. This book may be a little messy and a little loose, but that's life--you don't always know what you'll get, but you sure meet some interesting people along the way.

Vergil Wander is all about loss. Sound depressing? It's not. But everyone and every place in the book has lost something.

The town of Greenstone lost its mine, the reason there was a town in the first place. The eponymous narrator nearly lost his life in a spectacular accident and the trauma has caused him to lose his adjectives which sounds trivial but is not. The Majestic Theatre, which Vergil owns and manages has lost most of its audience and is in danger of losing its secret treasure. Nadine, who Vergil secretly (he thinks) loves, lost her husband Alec Sandstom, a nearly famous and nearly major league pitcher who pitched one legendary perfect game in the minor leagues, when he flew his small plane out over Lake Superior and vanished forever. Rune, Alec's father, discovered he had a son and lost him in the next paragraph of the letter sent to him by Alec's mother's lawyer after she died. "Greenstone was full of people who could make you sad just by strolling into view." It sounds tragic but gradually and almost imperceptibly things and people and love are being found. Not without pain and not without struggle but I cannot remember reading a more humane book.

The characters are memorable, human and otherwise - Vergil himself; Rune who lost the son he never knew but found his grandson Bjorn; Genghis the Racoon, terrorizing the town but tolerated and even admired; the giant sturgeon responsible for the death of Shad Pea, upon which Shad's 10 year old son Galen has sworn vengeance. There is more than a whiff of magic in Greenstone and perhaps even a demon in Adam Leer, son of the founder of the town and onetime Hollywood producer. Or perhaps he's just a guy.

I loved this book. I don't know how I missed Leif Enger but the next book I read will be Peace Like a River, his earlier novel from 10 years ago. He's an American treasure and so is this book.

Virgil Wander should not be alive. Twice he has escaped from death. The townspeople all heard rumors that he had died and felt it was because of some miracle that he was alive.

Virgil is a humble, simple man who is a fixture in his small community. He owns the local theatre, The Empress, and is the town clerk. It takes his near death experience for Virgil to make a change.

He comes home to a place that doesn’t seem like it’s his own—looks in a mirror at a man he feels he doesn’t know. He starts to question things about his life. Then slowly Virgil begins to live again, much more boldly than he did before.

Virgil wandered his way into my heart as I read his story. It’s not a fast-paced, exciting story, but a calm, meandering tale that demands reflection from time to time. It’s a story that requires the reader slow down a bit and think about life and those things most important. It’s a story where readers get to know Virgil and many of the townspeople that have had an impact on his life throughout the years.

I enjoyed this latest novel by Leif Enger. It felt a bit rushed at the end, but all in all, a solid read.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic, Grove Press for allowing me to read an advance copy and give an honest review.

A magical read with many different layers. Truly enjoyed this one and will be recommending it time and time again. Enjoyed the humor and whimsy of each character as the story unfolded. Thank you Grove and NetGalley!