So Brave, Young, and Handsome

Praise for
So Brave, Young, and Handsome:

“
So Brave, Young, and Handsome
is a sharp and brainy redemption tale, with all the twists and turns and thrills of a dime-store Western. . . . [Enger’s] laid claim to a musical, sometimes magical and deeply satisfying kind of storytelling.”

—Veronique de Turenne,
Los Angeles Times

“An old-fashioned, swashbuckling, heroic Western, with pistols and ponies and senoritas and sharpshooters—an adventure of the heart and mind.”

—Carrie Brown,
The Washington Post Book World

“With its brisk, short chapters and heady, nostalgic air, Enger’s delightful follow-up to
Peace Like a River
is a bighearted Western yarn, full of blossoming and reformed outlaws, wide prairies and aromatic orange groves, perilous chases and abductions, trouble and redemption. It’s an old-fashioned road trip you can’t afford to miss. . . . Enger’s tale is lively and generous of spirit, its stately prose steeped in warm, turn-of-the-century charm, and Monte’s discovery of his loyalty and limits is engaging. At a time when good westerns are hard to find,
So Brave, Young, and Handsome
deserves to become a classic.”

—Connie Ogle,
The Miami Herald

“
So Brave, Young, and Handsome
is an enthralling romp, appealing to fans of
Peace Like a River
—to anyone, that is, who loves a good story.”

—Mindy Friddle,
The Charlotte Observer

“A superbly written, utterly compelling story of self-discovery and redemption disguised as a cracking good adventure tale . . . Enger has created a work of great humanity and huge heart, a riveting piece of fiction that while highly accessible is never shallow. This story of an ordinary man’s discovery of who he is and his place in the world is exciting, admirable, and ultimately very affecting. . . . After reading the final page, don’t be surprised if you find yourself shaking your head and murmuring, ‘Wow. What a good book.’”

—Peter Moore,
Star Tribune
(Minneapolis)

“[Leif Enger is] a formidably gifted writer, one whose fictions are steeped in the American grain. . . . [He] is—like Ron Hansen—a child-friendly, contemporary American heartland novelist, a writer unafraid to concoct and couch his stories in such terms as faith, miracle, sin and grace, repentance and redemption, atonement and absolution. . . . Enger is a masterful storyteller . . . possessed of a seemingly effortless facility for the stiletto-sharp drawing of wholly believable characters [and] a pitch-perfect ear for the cadences and syntax of Midwest and Great Plains vernacular. His Amishly carpentered prose smacks of plow work, prairie, flapjacks and cider, butter churns, denim and calico. . . . At times reminiscent of the sinew and gristle in the craggier work of Annie Proulx, and at other times aspiring to a Jean Shepherdesque folk poetry . . .
So Brave, Young, and Handsome
is affable and human as all get out, homespun and sophisticated at once, wise and knowing about the ubiquity of the human condition and the vagaries of the human heart.”

—Bruce Olds,
Chicago Tribune

“A remarkable story told like the old-style Western novels. . . . [
So Brave, Young, and Handsome
] is an amazing adventure story, full of wonderful characters and a great plot.”

—Vicki Rock,
Somerset County Daily American

“If you want a picaresque tale similar in flavor to
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
or
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
read Leif Enger’s new book
So Brave, Young, and Handsome
. . . . Complete with reversals of fortune, shootouts, and colorfully drawn characters, this Western yarn is a fun ride and yet poignant too.”

—Elissa Elliott,
Christianity Today

“Leif Enger has done it again. He has a magic touch with a high-action road novel, and the road in
So Brave, Young, and Handsome
leads straight into the wild heart of the American West.
So Brave, Young, and Handsome
abounds with adventure, comradeship, and hardship, splendid characters, romance, humor, and goodnaturedness. It is a literary Western in all the best senses—and a world of fun to read.”

—Howard Frank Mosher

“
So Brave, Young, and Handsome
is an almost perfect novel, lively and engrossing, full of surprises, funny, touching, and a great read. . . . [This novel] will appeal to fans of Larry McMurty’s Western epics, but also to those who enjoy the magical realism of Isabel Allende and Alice Hoffman. The straightforward narrative, recounted in a single voice, keeps us turning the pages, faster and faster, and by the time the story comes full circle, Enger will have plenty of new fans hoping he gets to work soon on his next book.”

—Gail Pennington,
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“
So Brave, Young, and Handsome
is a fine novel, beautifully done, a serious Western story worthy of comparison with
Shane
and
Monte Walsh
and
True Grit
.”

—Bryan Woolley,
The Dallas Morning News

“[An] expansive saga of redemption in the early twentieth-century West . . . An adventure story [that is] so rich you can smell the spilled whiskey and feel the grit.”

—
Publishers Weekly

“[Leif Enger is in] fine storytelling form, as he spins a picaresque tale of redemption and renewal amid the fading glories of the Old West.”

—
Kirkus Reviews
(starred review)

“Ernest Hemingway famously remarked that ‘All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
,’ and while such a broad declaration might be worthy of challenge, it nonetheless struck me as apt while I was reading Leif Enger’s entertaining second novel. . . . Like
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
, Enger’s
So Brave, Young, and Handsome
involves a quintessentially American journey. . . . Enger delivers a rip-roaring follow-up.”

—Robert Weibezahl,
BookPage

SO BRAVE, YOUNG,
AND
HANDSOME

Also by Leif Enger

Peace Like a River

LEIF ENGER

Copyright © 2008 by Leif Enger

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, or the facilitation thereof, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.

Published simultaneously in Canada
Printed in the United States of America

eBook ISBN-13: 978-1-5558-4849-1

Atlantic Monthly Press
an imprint of Grove/Atlantic. Inc.
841 Broadway
New York, NY 10003

Distributed by Publishers Group West
www.groveatlantic.com

For Robin, Ty, and John the brightest colors I ever saw

“The Cowboy’s Lament”

We Beat the drum slowly and played the fife lowly

And bitterly wept as we bore him along

For we all loved our comrade, so brave, young, and handsome

We all loved our comrade, although he’d done wrong

SO BRAVE, YOUNG,
AND
HANDSOME

Not to disappoint you, but my troubles are nothing—not for an author, at least. Common blots aside, I have none of the usual Big Artillery: I am not penniless, brilliant, or an orphan; have never been to war, suffered starvation or lashed myself to a mast. My health is adequate, my wife steadfast, my son decent and promising. I am not surrounded by people who don’t understand me! In fact most understand me straightaway, for I am and always was an amiable fellow and reliably polite. You, a curious stranger, could walk in this moment; I would offer you coffee and set you at ease. Would we talk pleasantly? Indeed we would, though you’d soon be bored—here on Page One I don’t even live in interesting surroundings, such as in a hospital for the insane, or on a tramp steamer, or in Madrid. Later in the proceedings I do promise a tense chase or two and the tang of gunpowder, but here at the outset it’s flat old Minnesota and I am sitting on the porch of my comfortable farmhouse, composing the flaccid middle of my seventh novel in five years.

Seven novels
, you exclaim—quite right, but then I didn’t finish any of them. I’m grateful for that, and you should be too. Number Seven featured a handsome but increasingly bilious ranch hand named Dan Roscoe. A right enough pard to begin with, he became more arrogant page by page. No laconic wit for Dan! It was himself I was writing about, with many low sighs, the morning I first saw Glendon Hale rowing upstream through the ropy mists of the Cannon River. What a cool spring morning that was—birdsong, dew on the blossoms—I yearned to be on the river myself, but Dan Roscoe had rustlers to catch and a girl to win. Neither seemed likely. How often I sighed in those
days! I needed a revelation but you know how it is. I would have settled for a nice surprise.

Hearing the groan of oarlocks I peered downriver. A white-headed fellow was rowing up out of the haze.

He rowed standing, facing forward, a tottery business; twice as I watched, one of his narrow sweeps missed the water completely and he lurched like old Quixote, hooting to himself. The truth is he appeared a bit elevated, early though it was. As I say, he was white-haired with a white mustache and he wore white shirtsleeves and his boat too was white above the waterline, so that he had a spectral or angelic quality only somewhat reduced by his tipsy aspect.

Forth he came through the parting mists. To this day I don’t know what took hold of me as he approached. I stood from my work and called hello.

“Hello back,” said he, not pausing in his strokes.

“Pretty vessel,” I called.

“Pretty river,” he said, a simple reply that made me ache to be afloat. But he wasn’t slowing, as you might expect a polite person to do, and I stepped off the porch and jogged down to the stubby dock my son had built for fishing.

“Can you stop a minute? There’s coffee,” I said—sounding pushy, I suspect, though I am no extrovert; ask Susannah.

“Maybe,” he said, yet he was already well past me and in fact the haze was closing round him again. I had a last glimpse of his boat—its graceful sheer and backswept transom. Then it disappeared, though I could hear in the fog the dip of the old man’s oars, his screeling oarlocks, and what might have been a laugh of delight, as though he’d vanished by some mystic capacity that tickled him every time.

I went heavily back to the porch. My boy Redstart was there grinning—he was eleven, Redstart, catching up with his papa in all kinds of ways.

“Who was that man?” he inquired.

“I don’t know.”

“Was he drunk, do you think?”

“Anything’s possible.”

“He rows standing up,” said Redstart. “I never saw that before. Did you talk to him?”

“No, I didn’t.” I couldn’t look at the boy for a moment or two. I was embarrassed at how much I’d wanted to visit with the man in the boat, and how unaccountably sorry I was that he’d just rowed away. I sat in my chair and lifted pages into my lap. Dan Roscoe was waiting for me in those pages—boy, he was morose. Who could face it?

“I can still hear him,” Redstart said, “out in the mist. Can you hear him rowing, Papa?”

I looked at my son, the lover of mysteries. You could never guess what Redstart might say, for his mind was made of stories; he’d gathered all manner of splendid facts about gunpowder and deserts of the world and the anchoring of lighthouses against the furious sea; he knew which members of the James gang had once ridden into our town to knock over a bank and been shot to moist rags for their trouble; and about me he knew some things not even his mother knew, such as the exact number of novels I had abandoned on that porch. He whispered, “How many words today, Papa?”

I made a quick and not altogether honest guess. “Two hundred or so.”

“It’s early still, that’s pretty good,” he replied, then sat and shut his eyes and leaned awhile. I knew he should go take the horses to pasture or mulch the tomatoes but I didn’t want to lose his company. I picked up my pen and wrote:
As Dan Roscoe branded each bawling calf with the Moon Ranch insignia, he recalled how Belle had clung to the arm of his hated rival
—a moribund sentence that announced the death of my seventh novel. It didn’t surprise me. I had the grim yet satisfactory thought that it wouldn’t surprise Dan Roscoe, either. Well, let him moan! I was sick of Dan and his myriad problems.

“Red,” said I, “here’s an idea. Why don’t you go in the house and lay hands on a few of your mother’s orange rolls. Let’s climb in the boat and head upstream.”