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 with … 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.
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Too often when a book is made into a movie book lovers are disappointed. Fortunately Hollywood seems to be trying harder recently to keep movies truer to their book roots. Plainsong is a book that I think would make a very moving movie – a good old-fashioned drama. This story is so full of emotion – loss, love, friendship, struggle, compassion, …
Great author
It was an interesting read. Compelling enough to keep me reading to the end, but there were several things that bugged me.
First and foremost, I didn’t like that the author never gave you a sense of time. It could have been set in the 70s or current day, and it kept taking me out of the story. I finally looked at the copyright and saw it had to …
I picked up this book after hearing the author, Kent Haruf, speak on YouTube. Haruf died in 2014, but not before creating some spectacular realistic fiction. He wrote Plainsong, a National Book Award Finalist, in 2001. It still ranks on the Amazon charts to this day.
Set in the fictional small town of Holt, Colorado, Haruf paints a picture of a …
One of the most beautifully written books that I have ever read. The relationships between the two sets of brothers are second to none in descriptive power. Truly inspirational. But adult scenes make this inappropriate for children.
Haruf is one of my literary heroes and this books is his best. I adore it. There is a sadness and loneliness to everything Haruf writes. A missing something that is found, only to be lost again. A loneliness only found in the wide open spaces of the world where human connections are few and further between.
The pace and cadence of his majestic …
This book had potential, but ultimately disappointed me. There was no strong story line to follow, just splinters and vignettes, which was frustrating. Lacking a driving plot, the miscellaneous conflicts never built tension or anticipation.
The characterizations were thin and superficial. I suspect that this was in part due to the lack of a …
I fell in love with Kent Haruf’s writing when we read “Our Souls at Night” for Bookclub. His writing is lovely. I sat down and read the whole book in one afternoon and craved more. Now I’ve exhausted his books — he so sadly passed away in 2014.
“Plainsong”, I think, is the best. It is so touching, so tender, so loving that I probably will …