**A career defining tour-de-force from New York Times

**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.