Plainsong Books In Publication Order
- Plainsong (1999)
- Eventide (2004)
- Benediction (2013)
Standalone Novels In Publication Order
- The Tie That Binds (1984)
- Where You Once Belonged (1990)
- Our Souls at Night (2015)
Plainsong Book Covers
Standalone Novels Book Covers
Kent Haruf Books Overview
Plainsong
‘With Plainsong, Kent Haruf has conjured up an entire community, and ineluctably immersed the reader in its dramas. He has written a compelling and compassionate novel.’ Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times’Haruf’s unforgettable tale is both emotionally complex and elemental, following, as it so gracefully does, the cycle of life, death, and rebirth.’ BooklistNominated for the National Book Award, Kent Haruf’s Plainsong, Unabridged on audioA 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 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. Utterly true to the rhythms and patterns of life, Plainsong is a story to care about, believe in and learn from.’Plainsong is nothing short of a revelation.’ Richard Russo
Eventide
One of the most beloved novels in recent years, Plainsong was a best seller from coast to coast and now Kent Haruf returns to the High Plains community of Holt, Colorado, with a story of even more masterful authority. When the McPheron brothers see Victoria Roubideaux, the single mother they d taken in, move from their ranch to begin college, an emptiness opens before them and for many other townspeople it also promises to be a long, hard winter. A young boy living alone with his grandfather helps out a neighbor whose husband, off in Alaska, suddenly isn t coming home, leaving her to raise their two daughters. At school the children of a disabled couple suffer indignities that their parents know all too well in their own lives, with only a social worker to look after them and a violent relative to endanger them further. But in a small town a great many people encounter one another frequently, often surprisingly, and destinies soon become entwined for good and for ill as they confront events that sorely test the limits of their resilience and means, with no refuge available except what their own character and that of others afford them. Spring eventually does reach across the land, and how the people of Eventide get there makes for an engrossing, profoundly moving novel rich in the wisdom, humor, and humanity for which Kent Haruf is justly acclaimed. From the Hardcover edition.
The Tie That Binds
Colorado, January 1977. Eighty year old Edith Goodnough lies in a hospital bed, IV taped to the back of her hand, police officer at her door. She is charged with murder. The clues: a sack of chicken feed slit with a knife, a milky eyed dog tied outdoors one cold afternoon. The motives: the brutal business of farming and a family code of ethics as unforgiving as the winter prairie itself. In his critically acclaimed first novel, Kent Haruf delivers the sweeping tale of a woman of the American High Plains, as told by her neighbor, Sanders Roscoe. As Roscoe shares what he knows, Edith’s tragedies unfold: a childhood of pre dawn chores, a mother’s death, a violence that leaves a father dependent on his children, forever enraged. Here is the story of a woman who sacrifices her happiness in the name of family and then, in one gesture, reclaims her freedom. Breathtaking, determinedly truthful, The Tie That Binds is a powerfully eloquent tribute to the arduous demands of rural America, and of the tenacity of the human spirit.
Where You Once Belonged
The red Cadillac pulled down Main Street and sat by the tavern for hours, unnoticed. Then Ralph Bird of the Men’s Store recognized the driver as Jack Burdette and bolted to the sheriff’s office. The prodigal son of Holt, Colorado, had returned and he was far from welcome. In Where You Once Belonged, acclaimed novelist Kent Haruf tells of a small town hero who is dealt an enviable hand and cheats with all of the cards. In prose as lean and supple as a spring switch, Haruf describes a high school football star who wins the heart of the loveliest girl in the county and the admiration of men twice his age. Fun loving, independent, Burdette engages in the occasional prank. But when he turns into a man, his high jinks turn into crimes with unspeakable consequences. Now, eight years later, Burdette has returned to commit his greatest trespass of all. And the people of Holt may not be able to stop him. Deftly plotted, defiantly honest, Where You Once Belonged sings the song of a wounded prairie community in a narrative with the earmarks of a modern American classic.
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