Virgil Wander

"An enchanting and timeless all-American story that follows the inhabitants of a small Midwestern town in their quest to revive its flagging heart. Small town cinema owner Virgil Wander is "cruising along at medium altitude" when his Pontiac flies off a bridge into the icy depths of Lake Superior. Virgil survives but his language and memory are altered and he emerges into a world no longer familiar to him. Awakening into his new life, Virgil begins to piece together his personal history and the lore of his broken town, with the help of a cast of affable and curious locals ... Into this community returns a shimmering prodigal son, Adam Leer, who may hold the key to reviving their hard-luck town. With intelligent humor and captivating whimsy, Leif Enger conjures a remarkable portrait of a region and its residents, who, for reasons of choice or circumstance, never made it out of their depleted industrial surroundings. Carried aloft by quotidian pleasures of kite-flying, movies, fishing, baseball, necking in parked cars and falling in love, Virgil Wander is a swift, full journey into the heart and heartache of an often overlooked upper Midwest"--