Plainsong

Plainsong

Published:
2000-08-22
Categories:
Author:
ISBN:
9780375705854
Meeting:
2022-02-07 (meeting #61)
Chosen by:
Cheryl
Pages:
301
File size (e-book):
241 KB
Download URL:

Description:

A heartstrong story of family and romance, tribulation and tenacity, set on the High Plains east of Denver.

In the small town of Holt, Colorado, a high school teacher is confronted with raising his two boys alone after their mother retreats first to the bedroom, then altogether.  A teenage girl—her father long since disappeared, her mother unwilling to have her in the house—is pregnant, alone herself, with nowhere to go.  And out in the country, two brothers, elderly bachelors, work the family homestead, the only world they've ever known.  From these unsettled lives emerges a vision of life, and of the town and landscape that bind them together—their fates somehow overcoming the powerful circumstances of place and station, their confusion, curiosity, dignity and humor intact and resonant.  As the milieu widens to embrace fully four generations, Kent Haruf displays an emotional and aesthetic authority to rival the past masters of a classic American tradition.

Author Details:

Kent Haruf (1943–2014) was a novelist best known for Plainsong (1999). Set in the fictional town of Holt in northeast Colorado, Plainsong and Haruf’s other novels examine the lives of ordinary people on the high plains. Often praised for his unadorned style and humane outlook, Haruf is generally regarded as one of the great American novelists of his time.