Leif Enger is one of those Minnesota writers I’ve always wanted to read but never got around too. Part of the fear was the old-timey western sort of themes that seem to run through his books. I’m not an old-timey western kind of girl. But you know, sometimes it’s good to branch out from your comfort zone.

I’m glad I took the chance on So Brave, Young, and Handsome, Enger’s roadtrip book about a novelist with writer’s block and a train robber bent on apologizing to the wife he abandoned decades ago.

There’s something charming about older gentlemen taking off from their homes in search of that something missing from their lives. Enger’s book, which came out a year or so before, reminded me of The English Major by Jim Harrison. Both have older men (and by older I mean men past the bullshit 20/30something angst that plagues so many novels) traveling across the country and getting into some kind of trouble.

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