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A beautiful, heartbreaking and ultimately redemptive novel.

Set in the fictional town of Holt, Colorado in the real life eastern plains of that Rocky mountain state, and adjacent to the great elevations, author Kent Haruf’s somber 1999 novel Plainsong explores the interconnected lives of a group of people living and dying in this western plains town.

Guthrie is a high school teacher raising two young boys and whose marriage is coming to a strange and murky end. Tom Guthrie is a simple western man, trying to maintain a sense of himself and his standards in the face of many and sundry complications. Not a perfect hero, Haruf casts Tom in a realistic light, but one from which heroism is seen plainly.

Tom’s sons Ike and Bobby, ten and nine years old, feel the loss of their mother in the not-understanding way that children struggle with in a separation. Haruf tells of the separation obliquely and lets the reader try to understand no doubt as real life participants also strive to make sense of relationships gone awry.

Victoria Roubideaux, one of Tom’s students, is a seventeen year old who is pregnant and faces the difficulties of family and relationships with a quiet dignity of young mothers throughout history. Like Guthrie, Haruf has created in Victoria not a one dimensional, flawless heroine, but rather painted with the brush of harsh realism; but Victoria and her sweet nature is one of the most charming aspects of this book.

The McPheron’s, Raymond and Harold, are two elderly bachelor brothers who operate a ranch at the edge of town. They are persuaded to take in Victoria and the relationship that forms between the three is the hard nucleus around which the novel grows.

Maggie Jones is a colleague of Tom’s who provides the connection between all of the other characters. A strong and wise woman who is also described as earthy and sensuous.

Haruf has created a stark landscape, and peopled that harsh world with players as tough and resilient as the first people of the plains.