I Cheerfully Refuse

A career defining tour-de-force from New York Times
bestselling, award-winning and "formidably gifted" (Chicago Tribune) author
of Peace Like a River Leif Enger.

A storyteller "of great humanity and huge heart" (Minneapolis
Star Tribune), Leif Enger debuted in the literary world with Peace Like
a River which sold over a million copies and captured readers' hearts
around the globe. Now comes a new milestone in this boldly imaginative author's
accomplished, resonant body of work. Set in a not-too-distant America, I
Cheerfully Refuse is the tale of a bereaved and pursued musician embarking
under sail on a sentient Lake Superior in search of his departed, deeply
beloved, bookselling wife. Rainy, an endearing bear of an Orphean narrator,
seeks refuge in the harbors, fogs and remote islands of the inland sea. Encountering
lunatic storms and rising corpses from the warming depths, Rainy finds on land
an increasingly desperate and illiterate people, a malignant billionaire ruling
class, crumbled infrastructure and a lawless society. Amidst the Gulliver-like
challenges of life at sea and no safe landings, Rainy is lifted by physical
beauty, surprising humor, generous strangers, and an unexpected companion in a
young girl who comes aboard. And as his innate guileless nature begins to make
an inadvertent rebel of him, Rainy's private quest for the love of his life
grows into something wider and wilder, sweeping up friends and foes alike in
his strengthening wake.

I Cheerfully Refuse epitomizes the "musical, sometimes magical and deeply
satisfying kind of storytelling" (Los Angeles Times) for which Leif
Enger is cherished. A rollicking
narrative in the most evocative of settings, this latest novel is a symphony
against despair and a rallying cry for the future.