I Cheerfully Refuse

By: Leif Enger

Narrated by: David Aaron Baker

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 more than a million copies and captured audiences’ hearts around the globe. Now comes a new milestone in this boldly imaginative author’s 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. Amid 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.

“A heart-racing ballad of escape, shot-through with villainy and dignity, humor and music. Like Mark Twain, Enger gives us a full accounting of the human soul, scene by scene, wave by wave.”—Josh Ritter, singer and author of The Great Glorious Goddamn of It All

©2024 Reuben Land Corporation (P)2024 Recorded Books

Slow Stead Burn

This book is a slow, but steady pace for a book. I listened at 1.9x speed and that kept it moving for me. Any slower and I might have lost interest. The characters are steady also, nothing wild, but solid characters.

interesting setting

The ending was blah, but the story was compelling. It just ran out of steam a bit...

Fearful future tale

Exciting sailing adventures and danger on Lake Superior, interesting characters , good descriptive writing, but one of favorite characters gets killed off too soon,

Great epic sweet story

An apocalyptic journey told from the perspective of a gentle and kind Everyman. Has elements of cormac McCarthy and the Iliad and maybe a little mad max. Loved it

Epic Moving Story

I am so thankful to have found Leif Enger - to have been willingly lost in this epic story - and to emerge wiser, and hopeful, and grateful for the good we have and the need to tend to that good.