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“They separated and began their individual halves of the [paper] route. Between them they had the entire town. Bobby took the older, more established part of Holt, the south side where the wide flat streets were lined with elm trees and locust and hackberry and evergreen, where the comfortable two-story houses were set back in their own spaces of lawn and where behind them the car garages opened out onto the graveled alleys, while Ike, for his part, took the three blocks of Main Street on both sides, the stores and the dark apartments over the stores, and also the north side of town across the railroad tracks, where the houses were smaller with frequent vacant lots in between, where the houses were painted blue or yellow or pale green and might have chickens in the back lots in wire pens and here and there dogs on chains and also car bodies rusting among the cheetwood and redroot under the low-hanging mulberry trees…�
- Kent Haruf, Plainsong

There are destination novels, where it matters how it ends, and there are journey novels, where it matters how you get there, and then there is Plainsong. Set in the fictional Colorado town of Holt, Kent Haruf’s modern classic does not really care about journeys or destinations. Rather, it is a hang-out novel, a book where you visit a place, spend some time getting to know the people, and then leave. It’s like a vacation without the hidden Airbnb fees. Though a visit to a made-up, scrappy speck-on-a-map located on the windblown high plains might not seem like much of a holiday, it is well worth the effort.

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The first thing that should be said about Plainsong has to do with expectations. This is a rather humble story, about ordinary people living ordinary lives. There are no explosive revelations. There are no explosions of any kind, actually. None of the characters are homicide detectives, land barons, or employed by the Cartel. The biggest moment might be a clumsy fight, and it ends without any clearly defined consequences.

I say this because Plainsong has developed an extremely robust reputation since it’s 1999 publication. Instantly recognized for its merits � it was a finalist for the National Book Award � Plainsong birthed two sequels and a television movie. Time � as well as Haruf’s passing � has only served to burnish its stature.

In reality, honors, accolades, and gushing reviews can sometimes work against a book like Plainsong, heaping upon its slender spine more weight than it can bear. Haruf’s ambitions were calibrated to those of his creations, and if you go into this expecting to be knocked off your chair, or to have your eyes dazzled, or your mind blown, you are apt for disappointment.

Plainsong stays within itself. It works because Haruf knew � or seems to know, at least � exactly the story he wants to tell, and then tells it masterfully.

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The structure of Plainsong is simple, sturdy, and effective, as simple and sturdy things often are. It is written in the third-person, and told in alternating chapters that focus on a handful of characters, many of whom have overlapping storylines. The central protagonist � to the extent there is one � is Tom Guthrie, a local high school teacher, and father to two young boys, Ike and Bobby. We also spend significant time with young Victoria Roubideaux, thrown out of her house when her mother finds she’s pregnant, and the McPheron brothers, crusty old bachelors who raise cattle. Also important � though she never gets a chapter of her own � is Maggie Jones, a teacher like Tom who serves to instigate the plot, such as there is a plot to instigate.

Each of the characters is dealing with the typical, everyday difficulties of life faced by just about everyone on earth. Tom is trying to take care of his kids, after his wife left for Denver, while also facing down a boorish family of bullies. The kids are dealing with the fallout of their mother leaving, while also completing the morning paper route. Victoria is a pregnant teen with a suspect boyfriend, while the McPherons are in danger of never letting anyone into their emotional spheres. None of it is groundbreakingly original, but in Haruf’s empathetic hands, it is meaningful.

While much of Plainsong is gentle, even delicate, there are some sharp edges. Among other things, there is a disturbing sex scene, as well as a rather violent prank. These dark glimpses serve an important dual purpose, increasing the stakes, and also establishing a fuller reality. This is a mostly warmhearted tale, but that warmth would not matter without a menacing chill lurking on the periphery.

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Probably my favorite aspect of Plainsong is its marvelous evocation of place. Haruf is a beautiful writer, with prose that is elegant without veering off into opacity. His writerly skills are best used in developing Holt and its surrounding countryside. The Colorado of our collective minds is filled with images of the Rocky Mountains, of snow-capped peaks slashed with gorgeous green valleys. Haruf’s Colorado is different. It is the Colorado of the east, where the landscape is harsher, starker, closer to Willa Cather’s Nebraska than a brochure for Estes Park.

Haruf paints his town skillfully, so that you can almost walk its streets; he captures the surrounding prairies, so that you can see the cattle in the grass; and he channels the cold winter winds, so that you feel it chapping your cheeks.

***

It has often been said that the “real� or “authentic� America is to be found it its rural areas. To that end, there is no shortage of novels about small towns. Looking around my home office, I can see any number of titles centered on diminutive communities and the folks living within them.

Interestingly, despite the Norman Rockwell-derived reverence for small-town life, many of the books that describe it take a somewhat negative view. The Peyton Place of Peyton Place is bursting with buried scandals and festering secrets. The Empire Falls of Empire Falls is on the verge of dying, along with the industry that once supported it. The kids of Thalia � in The Last Picture Show � are filled with ennui, while the citizens of Lake Wobegon � captured in Lake Wobegon Days � are quaint and quirky to the point of being simpleminded.

Haruf, though, does not talk down to the inhabitants of Holt, Colorado. He does not operate from the assumption that � because they do not reside in New York or Los Angeles � they are necessarily enduring lives of quiet desperation, hopelessly constrained by the accident of their geography. Instead, he gives his characters grace, dignity, flaws, virtues, heartaches, triumphs, and contentment. Plainsong captures the richness of life by keenly evoking the details of its everyday rhythms, and by unobtrusively showing us the joys of connection, and the many ways those connections can be forged.