Virgil Wander

A long time ago, I read Peace Like a River by author Leif Enger. I can't remember what it was about, but I do remember liking it very much. I skipped his 2nd solo book (he has also written 5 mysteries with his brother) but decided to read this, his 3rd novel. And I really liked it. I am not normally a fan of magical realism but that seems not so distracting in this story.
Virgil Wander has just taken a header off a cliff into icy Lake Superior when a sudden snowstorm transformed the highway into a skating rink and his car doesn't make the curve. Fortunately for Virgil, one of the citizens of former mining town, Greenstone, Minnesota, happens to be fishing on the shore below him and jumps in the water to pull Virgil out of the sinking car. The story opens as Virgil is coming back to awareness and his wrestling with the aftermath of concussion. His words are fugitive but his neurologist is not too worried.
" 'Don't worry, everything will come back,' said Dr. Koskinen. 'Most things probably will. A good many of them might return. There will be at least a provisional rebound. How does this make you feel?' I wanted to say relieved or encouraged or at least hopeful but none of these were available."
Virgil is the town clerk and also owns a run-down old movie theatre that never makes any money. People are glad he is alive, but he is unsure if he can resume his former life. He feels like an observer and begins to wonder about doing things differently. He also realizes something is off when he starts seeing a man standing on the water's surface of Lake Superior. He tells his neurologist, who just advises Virgil to let him (the Dr.) know if the man gets any closer.
When an elderly, kite-flying Swede, Rune, shows up in Greenstone looking for information about a son he didn't know he had until just a short time ago, Virgil takes him in so he doesn't have to survive the winter in a camper van. Rune's son was fleetingly a minor league baseball prospect but disappeared years ago in a small plane and has never come back. He left behind a lovely wife, Nadine, who Virgil has pined after for years, and a now-teenage son. Rune builds his fantastic, gravity-defying kites and queries people about his son. He is trying to know him in abstentia, and also--hopefully--through his son's son (Rune's grandson).
Another mystical and less benign element is introduced in the person of Adam Leer, a prodigal son of Greenstone with a pretty checkered past in the movie business. Why has he come back and why does (almost) everyone he come in contact with suffer some ill consequences? One of the towns less well-off inhabitants dies in a confrontation with a "homicidal sturgeon" (Kirkus), although that probably wasn't Adam's fault. The mayor wants to revive the town and so a big summer party and parade is planned, with the quirky theme being all the town's past misfortunes. There isn't a lot of action in this story--fishing, kite-flying--but it is rich in character and atmosphere. You feel like you could sit down at the local bar and have a chat over a beer with any of them.
Again, I found this book so endearing that I am tempted to go back and re-read Peace and also read Enger's 2nd book, So Brave, Young, and Handsome. Fine reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, and the New York Times calls his prose "rhapsodic, kaleidoscopic."