Plainsong
Kent Haruf
Synopsis
Set in Kent Haruf's fictional landscape of Holt County, Colorado, Plainsong is a story of simple lives told with extraordinary empathy.
With an introduction by Peter Carey, author of True History of the Kelly Gang.
I suppose it is crazy. I don't know. I don't even care. But that girl needs somebody . . . And you old solitary bastards need somebody too. Somebody or something besides an old red cow to care about and worry over.
Tom Guthrie is struggling to bring up his two young sons alone and, in the same town, school girl Victoria Roubideaux is pregnant and homeless. Whilst Tom's boys find their way forward without their mother, brothers Harold and Raymond McPheron – gentle, solitary, gruff and unpolished – agree to take Victoria in, unaware that their lives will change forever.
A novel of haunting beauty from one of America's greatest writers of our time, Plainsong is an undeniable classic that explores the grace and hope of every human life and mankind's infinite capacity for love.
Kent Haruf's prose murmurs a haunting melody through the intertwined lives of a Colorado community. It is a simple tale of life, death, love and hatredThe Times
Like all the best novels, Plainsong takes you into a world that is at once real and vividly imagined. Here is a poetry of landscape, a tender and passionate evocation of ordinary people in majestic countryNiall Williams
The hundreds of thousands of fans of this book have been nothing less than devotional in their praise of Kent HarufTimes Literary Supplement