Then he made news himself.

Well, maybe we should say his publicist made him news. His first novel, Peace Like a River, earned lots of advertising from its publisher. And in Minnesota, where (to prosaically paraphrase poet Reed Whittemore) people are always hungry for recognition of local cultural achievements by people in New York, the story was easy to sell to newspapers, magazines, radio, and even TV news.

This is a book that aspires to literature. I don't know if it makes it. But, I'm not a scholar, editor, or New York critic, so what difference does my evaluation make?

The literary aspirations begin with the miraculous birth of the narrator ("I believe I was preserved...in order to be a witness..."), a creed ("The answer, it seems to me now, lies in the miracles."), and a mission ("We and the world, my children, will always be at war.").

Enger tells a good story. It wasn't compelling. I put it down often to read other things. But, I kept coming back to hear more of the story.

There are good guys and bad guys mostly. The good guys are mostly likable. The bad guys are ugly and unlikable. There's even a little ambiguity.

There is adventure and mishap and good fortune. But there's something missing. Given a little more thinking, I might put my finger on it. But, it's not really worth it to me, mostly because of the creed that holds the book together from beginning to end.

I react pretty negatively to stories that depend on credulity-stretching devises. Sue Grafton, the last time I read one of her books, is my favorite example right now. You know. The character who says, "When I saw the body through the window, I should have called the police, but I just had to see what was in the desk drawer in that room," is asking for it. I'm not.

Well, Enger uses miracles to move along the story of Peace Like a River. From the miracle birth to a miraculous healing, to the bequest of a lonely traveling salesman, to the final miracle of the story. Some of them are individually believable. Taken together in one story, they are too much.

I can imagine this story of adventure and tragedy and ordinary life being told even more compellingly than it is without the miracles. I wish Enger had done it. I'd have enjoyed the book much more if I'd gotten the impression that things just happened and not that some author was searching for ways to direct the actions to his desired end.

And what does the title have to do with anything in the book? It's a mystery to me.

Here's another of those cases when I'd really like to hear what you thought of this book. Write. Tell a little bit of the world what you think.

• David Abrams' review Peace Like a River from January Magazine
• A review from Plough (A net publication of the Bruderhof Communities in the UK, where people are more comfortable with miracles than I am.)
• Barbara Liss' review from the Houston Chronicle