I read I Cheerfully Refuse which I really enjoyed and Leif Enger is consistently lauded for this one. The story has a similar plot structure: meet characters settled into a rhythm of life and they are ripped away from it by violent events that force them on a journey. This book is beautifully written with plenty of small reflections on things not relevant to the plot. The penultimate chapter is an emotional climax and satisfying payoff. Otherwise it’s a slow read. Published in 2001 and so 25 years old during my read; the themes and storytelling in I Cheerfully Refuse resonate more now. 

The narrator, Reuben Land, recounts a series of events and miracles that occur in his childhood. His dad, Jeremiah, appears to effect them, big and small, obvious and subtle. Some characters notice more than others. Some are biblical in proportion, like healing. Others, like a gas tank which never empties, seem like circumstance or the product of a faulty childhood memory. All of them very personal and intimate. 

It is one thing to be sick of your own infirmities and another to understand that the people you love most are sick of them also.

This is also a story of captivity. Many of the characters are mired in situations beyond their control. Reuben suffers from debilitating asthma that limits his physical abilities in and outside his home. In this time and place his illness is unabated by ineffectual treatments that hurt more than they help. Jeremiah is an underachieving single parent who is bound to his faith and to God, spending more energy on confrontational prayer in "anticipation of things unseen" than on his three children. As a result his disposition alienates the eldest son, Davy, who yearns to be a more active agent in his own life than subject to the whims of God. And Swede, daughter, her never ending Western poem about the hero Sunny and villain Valdez captivates Reuben and the reader as old cowboy Western tropes are mirrored in the family's adventures and trials. I could go on: winter hardened Midwest landscapes, feckless doctors, a garrulous outlaw, an unshakable fed... all these characters immobilizing another or held fast into place by something else.
 

People fear miracles because they fear being changed

Jeremiah's "miracles" drive the story forward. They release characters from their captivity. They introduce new characters. They induce movement and change. They divert the Land family around abrupt and early endings. And it works. Reuben is enamored by his father who in spite of his weaknesses and limitations takes them on an adventure out West to rescue Davy.

But Jeremiah's miracles are limited and seemingly unpredictable. Rarely is the audience more than an intimate few. They never never occur to effect more than one two people, such as any way to assist Davy during the trial. Their effects are limited. Jeremiah isn't feeding five thousand.

I'm not sure what to take away from the story. Are life's miracles are those points in our life we otherwise attribute to seemingly random, good luck? What difference would that make, especially in the absence of an actor effecting them? And the actor in this story is hard to relate. So while I enjoyed the story I'm not sure these ideas will stick with me.