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Book Reviewed by:Haruf returns to the small town of Holt, Colorado to continue the story he started in Plainsong (1999) with an engrossing and profoundly moving novel rich in wisdom, humor and humanity.
One of the most beloved novels in recent years, Plainsong was a best-seller from coast to coast—and now Kent Haruf returns to the High Plains community of Holt, Colorado, with a story of even more masterful authority.
When the McPheron brothers see Victoria Roubideaux, the single mother they’d taken in, move from their ranch to begin college, an emptiness opens before them—and for many other townspeople it also promises to be a long, hard winter. A young boy living alone with his grandfather helps out a neighbor whose husband, off in Alaska, suddenly isn’t coming home, leaving her to raise their two daughters. At school the children of a disabled couple suffer indignities that their parents know all too well in their own lives, with only a social worker to look after them and a violent relative to endanger them further. But in a small town a great many people encounter one another frequently, often surprisingly, and destinies soon become entwined—for good and for ill—as they confront events that sorely test the limits of their resilience and means, with no refuge available except what their own character and that of others afford them.
Spring eventually does reach across the land, and how the people of Eventide get there makes for an engrossing, profoundly moving novel rich in the wisdom, humor, and humanity for which Kent Haruf is justly acclaimed.
Haruf returns to the small town of Holt, Colorado to continue the story he started in Plainsong (1999). However, you don't have to have read Plainsong to enjoy this tale This tale could so easily have turned to slush in less skilled hands, but as one reviewer puts it Haruf is 'a master of restraint and a writer of remarkable tenderness and dignity [who] tells his characters' tough stories without omniscient commentary, trusting in the power of straight-ahead prose and realistic predicaments. Highly recommended...continued
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(Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).
A self-proclaimed "ministry brat," Kent Haruf (rhymes with sheriff) grew up in eastern Colorado, where his novels are set. He studied literature at Nebraska Wesleyan University in Lincoln (where he would later teach). He took graduate courses at the University of Kansas and is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop. For two years he taught English in Turkey as a member of the Peace Corps. He was 41 before his first piece of fiction was published.
He lives with his wife, Cathy, in his native Colorado. When asked about the great popularity of his work, he says, "I've been around long enough to know that this is in part a matter of luck. I don't think it's turned my head. Fame is very seductive and can be very dangerous if you...
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