Eventide

by Kent Haruf

Published 1 January 2004
With Victoria Roubideaux now at college, the McPheron brothers are alone on their farm once again, yet struggling to settle back into old ways and routines; Tom Guthrie and Maggie Jones, meanwhile, are finding their future together more assured, even while they're still finding their feet as a couple. Alongside these familiar faces and places, however, are new characters and their stories: Betty and Luther, who are struggling to keep their heads above water and their children Joy Rae and Richie out of care; eleven-year-old DJ who has spent much of his supposedly carefree childhood caring for his cantankerous grandfather Walter; DJ's friend Dena, her mother and sister, all of whom are trying to adjust to life and a home without the girls' father.

Benediction

by Kent Haruf

Published 1 January 2013

One long last summer for Dad Lewis in his beloved town, Holt, Colorado. As old friends pass in and out of his front door to voice their farewells, their prayers, their good wishes, Dad's wife and daughter work to make his final days as comfortable as possible, knowing all is tainted by the heart-break of an absent son.

Next door, a little girl moves in with her grandmother and is drawn into the circle of friendship, her innocence and youth providing promise and hope to all those around her.

And down town another new arrival, the Reverend Rob Lyle, attempts to mend strained relationships of his own, as he faces up to his latest congregation.

Set in an imaginative landscape as vivid and powerful as those of Cormac McCarthy and Annie Proulx, Benediction is a devastating yet affirming novel that explores the pain, the compassion and above all the humanity of ordinary people.


Plainsong

by Kent Haruf

Published 21 September 1999
National Book Award Finalist

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.