Kent Haruf, author of Plainsong, one of the most beloved novels in recent years, has wisely continued the franchise in Eventide, another foray into the prairie town of Holt, Colorado. We meet some of the same people--the McPheron brothers, Tom Guthrie and Maggie Jones, Victoria and her daughter Katie, and are introduced to new ones. Once again, the quirky bachelors Harold and Raymond McPheron, short on conversation and long on heart, form the sweet center of the book. The constants here are the brothers, the landscape--by turns hostile, demanding and renewing--and a few of the locals, whom we meet in varying degrees of their travails and redemption.

Victoria, the young pregnant woman the brothers took in in Plainsong, has gone off to college at Fort Collins, leaving the brothers standing at the kitchen counter, "drinking coffee and talking about how Victoria Roubideaux was doing a hundred and twenty-five miles away from home ... while they themselves were living as usual in the country in Holt County ... with so much less to account for now that she was gone, and a wind rising up and starting to whine outside the house." Much as Seinfeld was called the TV show about nothing, Haruf's books are so low-key and straightforward that a careless reader might miss the fact that they are about everything that life has to offer: love, sorrow, malice, understanding, and the connections that make and keep us human, to name a few.

DJ is an 11-year-old living alone with his grandfather, when he befriends two young girls whose father left for Alaska and decided not to return. Their mother is mired in grief and the three children, abandoned by the adults in their lives, find refuge in an old shed they make habitable. "So for a while the two sisters and the boy lay on the floor under the blankets, reading books in the dim candlelight, with the sun falling down outside in the alley, the three of them talking a little softly, drinking coffee from a thermos, and what was happening in the houses they’d come from, seemed, for that short time, of little importance." One of Haruf's particular gifts is in showing us people who give and take solace wherever it may be found.

An unfortunate disabled couple, parents of two young children, are trying to make their way in a world they cannot fathom. They are assisted by Rose Tyler, their caseworker, who is a friend of Maggie Jones. aggie, who drew Tom Guthrie out of his depression in Plainsong, is once again a catalyst for change when she introduces Rose to Raymond. There is no doubt more to come, as life in Holt, Colorado, continues to evolve and Kent Haruf keeps us informed. --Valerie Ryan


From Publishers Weekly
Haruf's follow-up to the critically acclaimed and bestselling Plainsong is as lovely and accomplished as its predecessor. The aging bachelor McPheron brothers and their beloved charges, Victoria and her daughter, Katie, return (though Victoria quickly heads off to college), and Haruf introduces new folks-a disabled couple and their children, an old man and the grandson who lives with him-in this moving exploration of smalltown lives in rural Holt, Colo. Ranchers Raymond and Harold McPheron have spent their whole lives running land that has been in their family for many generations, so when Harold is killed by an enraged bull, worn-out Raymond faces a void unlike any he has ever known. His subsequent first-ever attempts at courtship and romance are almost heartbreaking in their innocence, but after some missteps, he finds unexpected happiness with kind Rose Tyler. Rose is the caseworker for a poor couple struggling so dimly and futilely to better their lives that it becomes painful to witness. Children play crucial roles in the novel's tapestry of rural life, and they are not spared life's trials. But Haruf's characters, such as 11-year-old orphan DJ Kephart, who cares for his retired railroad worker grandfather, and Mary Wells, whose husband abandons her with two young girls, maintain an elemental dignity no matter how buffeted by adversity. And while there is much sadness and hardship in this portrait of a community, Haruf's sympathy for his characters, no matter how flawed they are, make this an uncommonly rich novel. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From School Library Journal
Adult/High School–In this sequel to Plainsong(Knopf, 1999), Victoria Roubideaux and her baby move from the McPheron ranch to settle into her new life of college and single parenthood. When Harold McPheron is accidentally killed by a bull, his brother, Raymond, tries desperately to cope with the ranch and living by himself. Rose Tyler, a kind, middle-aged social worker, eventually becomes his friend and lover and acts as a balance in his life. Harold becomes a part of the lives of her clients, especially young DJ Kephart, who struggles daily to be both an elementary school child and caregiver to his grandfather. This natural interaction of people thrown together by fate and unplanned circumstances realistically mimics life in general and, specifically, the community life of many small towns. The overall tone of the book offers hope and love despite the stark moments of sadness and grief. Compassion, strength of character, and loving concern for all life become the positive forces that help each of the individuals carry on. This book stands alone, but reading the two novels in sequence gives additional meaning and understanding to the events and characters.–Pam Johnson, Fairfax County Public Library, VA Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
In his new novel, Eventide, Kent Haruf picks up the story a year after the conclusion of his popular 1999 novel, Plainsong. The McPheron brothers, two gruff plainspoken bachelors, are eating breakfast in the kitchen of their ranch with Victoria Roubideaux, the girl they took in -- she was 17 and pregnant -- at the urging of the well-meaning folk of Holt, Colo. Her child, Katie, now 1, fusses in her high chair and is persuaded to eat only when taken into the rough paws of Harold McPheron. There is talk of Victoria and Katie's imminent departure for Fort Collins and college, of not wanting to leave home or be left at home. It is a mournful, tenderly rendered scene of leave-taking.And so the McPheron brothers, no longer as incurious in their isolation as they once were, return to the rhythms of ranching, with a different set of seasons on their minds: Thanksgiving visits and Christmas vacations. Haruf details this life beautifully, and anyone who wants to know what really goes on in cattle country besides celebrity mini-ranch fantasies need look no further. When tragedy strikes the McPherons, it comes directly out of the risks faced by men who spend their lives around dangerous hardware and recalcitrant beasts.In the town of Holt, meanwhile, other, more urban plights are on stage. We see the mentally challenged Luther and Betty Wallace trying their best to raise their children, Richie and Joy Rae; a recently abandoned wife, Mary Wells, struggling to keep her attention focused on her two children, Dena and Emma; 11-year-old orphan DJ Kephart cooking and caring for the only family he's got, his grandfather, Walter. Off in the wings are a selection of deadbeat dads and murderous uncles. Just slightly above the scene, watching and fretting over these threatened lives, sit the godmothers and godfathers of Holt, Plainsong holdovers Tom Guthrie and Maggie Jones and, playing a new part, social worker Rose Tyler.This is a good if somewhat familiar cast. Haruf brings them and the toil of their days to life with clarity and precise, lyric prose, and he has a good number of plot turns and all too real challenges in store for them. Holt is no paradise, but Haruf's care is upon each and every one of his characters, and, in the end, most futures seem brighter than they were at the beginning. Like Plainsong, Eventide is a kind book in a cruel world. As much as simple neighborliness and small-town values can do, they do. What they can't accomplish is not for lack of trying.It would be churlish in the extreme to object to much of this, and I hope as many people who loved Plainsong flock to the stores for the new installment. But they may be a little disappointed. Plainsong was a novel built boldly around an improbability, that these two reclusive old coots and the confused runaway would come together as family. The unlikelihood of its happy conclusion gave the narrative its strength and was the source of its emotional payoff. Goodness can prevail, sometimes. But with each new improbability served up in Eventide, alas, the odds get longer and longer, and the conclusion starts to seem manufactured for maximum appeal. The unhappy endings for some of the minor characters seem inserted to defend the book against the charge that its vision is simplistic. Throughout the last third of the book one can, as Anthony Trollope warned, "smell the oil" of the narrative machinery.A good part of this problem is the inevitable challenge of a sequel that follows so quickly on the first installment. The difficulty arises out of more than just a straight comparison reading of both books end-to-end; Eventide, standing on its own, feels a little tired, maybe even a little bored. It's like a preacher sermonizing on the same text on consecutive Sundays. If one thinks of the contemporary sequels that have been most successful -- Updike's Rabbit books come first to my mind -- one hallmark seems to be the length of time between them, which allows the author and the characters to bring fresh thinking to the project. Updike needed 10 years between each book to do this.Still, this complaint should not stand in the way of success for this book. There's nothing wrong with happy endings, nothing false about mercy. The town and townspeople of Holt are in safe hands with Haruf, and these days we might all do well to look past a little narrative legerdemain in favor of honest impulses, real people and the occasional workings of grace. Reviewed by Christopher TilghmanCopyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.


From AudioFile
Nothing really happens in EVENTIDE, yet, somehow, the straightforward, no-nonsense conversations, the descriptions of the most ordinary things draw the listener in and won't let go. Haruf's writing, spare and lean as a Colorado cowboy, is partly responsible. However, much of the audiobook's charm comes from George Hearn's performance. Hearn adds just the right touches to define characters like the always sweet McPheron brothers; 11-year-old D.J., who's caring for his aged grandfather; three abandoned children who make themselves a home in a shed; and the mentally challenged parents whose children may be taken from them. In a cracker-barrel, good-old-boy delivery, Hearn slips in and out of the vastness of human loneliness, its capacity for love and grief--and its occasional stupidity. PLAINSONG fans are in for a treat. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
Haruf continues the story he told so poignantly in his best-selling and highly regarded novel Plainsong (1999), returning to tiny Holt, Colorado, and the cattle ranch of the elderly, laconic, and kind McPheron brothers, Harold and Raymond. The McPherons have long lived and worked together, but instead of being set in their ways, they happily welcomed teenage mother Victoria and her baby girl into their humble home. Now Victoria and Katie are about to move away so that Victoria can attend college. The brothers know that they're going to miss them, but no one is prepared for the tragedy that befalls Harold. Generous souls step up, and Raymond soldiers on, but others struggle mightily. Mary's despair over her husband's defection places her two young daughters in jeopardy. Orphaned 11-year-old DJ sacrifices his boyhood to care for his grandfather. Luther and Betty love their children, but they're none too bright and not even their caring social worker, Rose, can keep them safe. A master of restraint and a writer of remarkable tenderness and dignity, Haruf tells his characters' tough stories without omniscient commentary, trusting in the power of straight-ahead prose and realistic predicaments. And readers, grateful for a return visit to archetypal Holt and entranced by the bracing clarity of the wind-chilled open range and the solace of coffee-warm kitchens, will share Haruf's respect for life's mysteries and his faith in goodness. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Review
"Beautifully crafted and moving . . . Holt, Colorado [is] a town as fully realized and richly imagined as Faulkner's Jefferson, Mississippi." --Bill Marvel, Dallas Morning News

"[Eventide] possesses the haunting appeal of music, the folksy rhythms of an American ballad and the lovely, measured grace of an old hymn . . . Mr. Haruf's understated prose, combined with his emotional wisdom and his easy affection for his characters turns [the novel's] events into affecting drama. In mapping the postage-stamp-size world of Holt, he has limned the loneliness of the people there and their resilience and capacity for hope."--Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

"There's a decency that shines in the very accuracy with which [Haruf] describes the ordinary. Scene after scene, from cattle auction to back-booth seduction . . . flows by us as clear as spring water, proof that truth, like virtue, has its own reward."--Michael Harris, Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Eventide is admirably austere: Haruf handles even potentially explosive scenes with delicacy." --Margaret Quamme, Columbus Dispatch

"[Haruf] makes average people in fictional Holt, Colo., interesting, much like legendary Texas writer Horton Foote, [and] finds beauty and sadness in everyday life." --Kathy Harris, Fort Worth Star-Telegram

"Eventide is a lovely novel, all the more for its uncomprimising realism, its eschewing of the magical pallative of happy endings, its recognition that decency carries its own unique rewards."--Joan Mellen, Baltimore Sun

“Highly charged and compassionate . . . Every action in Holt casts a long shadow, and the gist of Haruf’s story is what happens when those shadows touch . . . Haruf’s writing draws power from his sense of character–its limitations and its possibilities–and how it propels action.”–New Yorker

“A kind book in a cruel world…[with] honest impulses, real people and the occasional workings of grace.”--Christopher Tilghman, Washington Post

"Haruf is a master of evocative description, [and his] lyrical style, which has been compared to that of Hemingway and Chekhov . . . quickly infects the reader with its own peculiar rhythms, to the point at which putting down the book and returning to real-world conversation is jarring. Most important, there is Haruf's spirit, which suggests that people unrelated by blood can and must form families, that a simple act of goodwill can occur even when it seems impossible."--Gail Pennington, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"Haruf's prose style emerges from behind [his] cast with a sober, homespun beauty . . . With Eventide, [he] has made them a permanent addition to the literary map of this country."--John Freeman, Milwaukee Journal-Star

"Haruf's storytelling at its best."--Jennifer Reese, Entertainment Weekly

"Eventide is a spare, delicate and beautiful book [that is] set in a world where an 11-year-old boy and an old bachelor rancher can both experience the wonder of a first kiss . . . Haruf has created another poignant meditation on the true meaning of family."--April Henry, Oregonian

"[Eventide] is a clear distillation of the writer's craft, a book that grabs you by the heart on the first page, refusing to release its grasp until the last . . . Just as day moves from late afternoon into night, Haruf's characters move inevitably toward, and through, personal challenge, [and] it is through these lives, both distinct and entwined, that Haruf quietly explores all that makes us human."--Robin Vidimos, Denver Post

"Haruf has once again demonstrated that he can push a tale featuring our Western landscape beyond romanticized cowboy myth into distilled reality."--Jenny Shank, Rocky Mountain News

"This hardscrabble story kicks up a dust cloud of melancholy that will sting even the most hardened readers' eyes. At the end of some chapters I was left wondering, Who in America can still write like this? Who else has such confidence and such humility?"--Ron Charles, Christian Science Monitor

"A stunning novel of brothers, land, grief, and redemption...The dry, cold air of Colorado's high plains seems to intensify the light Kent Haruf shines on every character in his masterful novel Eventide. He brings such grace and care to his examination of the ways we fail and, sometimes, help one another, that the end result is a book of hope, hope as plain and hard-won as Haruf's keenly styled prose.--Mark Doty, O Magazine

"This novelist writes with such unabashed wonder before life's mysteries, such compassion for frail humanity that he seems to have issued from another time, a better place."--Dan Cryer, Newsday

"Masterful... A full and satisfying novel complete unto itself [that] might be even more emotionally powerful than its predecessor . . ." --Karen Sandstrom, Cleveland Plain Dealer
 
"In creating a place whose people are tethered to each other by history and emotion as much as place, Haruf's work is now competing with Faulkner's Mississippi, Sherwood Anderon's Midwest, and Wallace Stegner's northern California."
--Mark Athitakis, Chicago Sun-Times

"Luminous . . . Haruf's uncanny ability to stay out of his characters' way is evident again in Eventide. What comes out of their mouths, whether it is kind, mean, ignorant, confused, intelligent or clouded by loneliness, is true and hard, spare as life on the plains . . . Eventide depicts a time, a place and its people so sincerely and so compellingly, with moments of such rare beauty, that the reader cannot walk away."
--Kathryn Eastburn, Colorado Springs Independent
 
"Like the lives he chronicles, Haruf's prose moves relentlessly forward, catching in his images the fierceness and sweetness of experience.
"--Mickey Pearlman, Minneapolis Star-Tribune

"Haruf is the author of some of the best fiction about American small-town and rural life being written today. As readers of Plainsong know, Haruf's taut, unsentimental storytelling and spare, graceful prose are capable of transporting the imagination to a deeper understanding of human responsibility and connection . . . Eventide offers many of the pleasures of Plainsong: a strong storyline, Haruf's wonderful, unadorned prose and several familiar characters . . . [But it ] takes on very different tonality and complexion from its predecessor. If Plainsong is morning or afternoon on the prairie, then Eventide is dusk; it is filled with a beautiful but somber light."--Alden Mudge, BookPage

"Melancholy truths set to gorgeous melody . . . Haruf sings the second verse of his moving hymn to life on America’s great plains.”
--Kirkus, starred review

"Haruf’s follow-up to the critically acclaimed and bestselling Plainsong is as lovely and accomplished as its predecessor. The aging bachelor McPheron brothers and their beloved charges, Victoria and her daughter, Katie, return (though Victoria quickly heads off to college), and Haruf introduces new folks–a disabled couple and their children, an old man and the grandson who lives with him–in this moving exploration of smalltown lives in rural Holt, Colo. Ranchers Raymond and Harold McPheron have spent their whole lives running land that has been in their family for many generations, so when Harold is killed by an enraged bull, worn-out Raymond faces a void unlike any he has ever known. His subsequent first-ever attempts at courtship and romance are almost heartbreaking in their innocence, but after some missteps, he finds unexpected happiness with kind Rose Tyler. Rose is the caseworker for a poor couple struggling so dimly and futilely to better their lives that it becomes painful to witness. Children play crucial roles in the novel’s tapestry of rural life, and they are not spared life’s trials. But Haruf’s characters, such as 11-year-old orphan DJ Kephart, who cares for his retired railroad worker grandfather, and Mary Wells, whose husband abandons her with two young girls, maintain an elemental dignity no matter how buffeted by adversity. And while there is much sadness and hardship in this portrait of a community, Haruf’s sympathy for his characters, no matter how flawed they are, make this an uncommonly rich novel."
--Publishers Weekly, starred review

 


From the Inside Flap
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.


About the Author
Kent Haruf’s honors include a Whiting Foundation Award and a special citation from the PEN/Hemingway Foundation. His most recent novel, Plainsong, won the Mountains & Plains Booksellers Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the New Yorker Book Award. He lives with his wife, Cathy, in his native Colorado.


Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
They came up from the horse barn in the slanted light of early morning. The McPheron brothers, Harold and Raymond. Old men approaching an old house at the end of summer. They came on across the gravel drive past the pickup and the car parked at the hogwire fencing and came one after the other through the wire gate. At the porch they scraped their boots on the saw blade sunken in the dirt, the ground packed and shiny around it from long use and mixed with barnlot manure, and walked up the plank steps onto the screened porch and entered the kitchen where the nineteen-year-old girl Victoria Roubideaux sat at the pinewood table feeding oatmeal to her little daughter.

In the kitchen they removed their hats and hung them on pegs set into a board next to the door and began at once to wash up at the sink. Their faces were red and weather-blasted below their white foreheads, the coarse hair on their round heads grown iron-gray and as stiff as the roached mane of a horse. When they finished at the sink they each in turn used the kitchen towel to dry off, but when they began to dish up their plates at the stove the girl made them sit down.

There's no use in you waiting on us, Raymond said.

I want to, she said. I'll be gone tomorrow.

She rose with the child on her hip and brought two coffee cups and two bowls of oatmeal and a plate of buttered toast to the table and then sat down again.

Harold sat eyeing the oatmeal. You think she might of at least give us steak and eggs this once, he said. On account of the occasion. But no sir, it's still only warm mush. Which tastes about like the back page of a wet newspaper. Delivered yesterday.

You can eat what you want after I'm gone. I know you will anyway.

Yes ma'am, probably so. Then he looked at her. But I'm not in any rush for you to leave here. I'm just trying to joke you a little.

I know you are. She smiled at him. Her teeth were very white in her brown face, and her black hair was thick and shiny and cut off neat below her shoulders. I'm almost ready, she said. First I want to feed Katie and get her dressed, then we can start.

Let me have her, Raymond said. Is she done eating?

No, she isn't, the girl said. She might eat something for you though. She just turns her head away for me.

Raymond stood and walked around the table and took up the little girl and returned to his seat and sat her on his lap and sprinkled sugar on the oatmeal in his bowl and poured out milk from the jar on the table and began to eat, the black-haired round-cheeked girl watching him as if she were fascinated by what he was doing. He held her easily, comfortably, his arm about her, and spooned up a small portion and blew over it and offered it to her. She took it. He ate more himself. Then he blew over another spoonful and gave that to her. Harold poured milk into a glass and she leaned forward over the table and drank a long time, using both hands, until she had to stop for breath.

What am I going to do in Fort Collins when she won't eat? Victoria said.

You can call on us, Harold said. We'll come see about this little girl in about two minutes. Won't we, Katie.

The child looked across the table at him, unblinking. Her eyes were as black as her mother's, like buttons or currants. She said nothing but took up Raymond's calloused hand and moved it toward the cereal bowl. When he held out the spoon she pushed his hand toward his mouth. Oh, he said. All right. He blew over it elaborately, puffing his cheeks, moving his red face back and forth, and now she would eat again.

When they were finished Victoria carried her daughter into the bathroom off the dining room to wash her face and then took her back to their bedroom and changed her clothes. The McPheron brothers went upstairs to their rooms and got into town clothes, dark trousers and pale shirts with pearl snaps and their good white hand-shaped Bailey hats. Back downstairs they carried Victoria's suitcases out to the car and set them in the trunk. The backseat was already loaded with boxes of the little girl's clothes and blankets and bedsheets and toys, and a child's padded car seat. Behind the car was the pickup and in its bed, together with the spare tire and the jack and a half dozen empty oil cans and dry wisps of brome hay and a piece of rusted barbed wire, were the little girl's high chair and her daybed, its mattress wrapped in a new tarp, all of it lashed down with orange binder twine.

They returned to the house and came out with Victoria and the little girl. On the porch Victoria paused for a moment, her dark eyes welling with sudden tears.

What's the matter here? Harold said. Is something wrong?

She shook her head.

You know you can always come back. We're expecting you to. We're counting on it. Maybe it'll help to keep that in mind.

It isn't that, she said.

Is it because you're kind of scared? Raymond said.

It's just that I'm going to miss you, she said. I haven't been gone before, not like this. That other time with Dwayne I can't even remember and I don't want to. She shifted the little girl from one arm to the other and wiped at her eyes. I'm just going to miss you, that's all it is.

You can call if you need something, Harold said. We'll still be here at the other end.

But I'm still going to miss you.

Yes, Raymond said. He looked out from the porch toward the barnlot and the brown pastures beyond. The blue sandhills in the far distance low on the low horizon, the sky so clear and empty, the air so dry. We're going to miss you too, he said. We'll be about like old played-out workhorses once you're gone. Standing around lonesome, always looking over the fence. He turned to study her face. A face familiar and dear to him now, the three of them and the baby living in the same open country, in the same old weathered house. But you think you can come on? he said. We probably ought to get this thing started if we're going to.



Raymond drove her car with Victoria sitting beside him so she could reach into the back and tend to Katie in her padded chair. Harold followed them in the pickup, out the lane onto the gravel county road, headed west to the two-lane blacktop, then north toward Holt. The country both sides of the highway was flat and treeless, the ground sandy, the wheat stubble in the flat fields still bright and shiny since its cutting in July. Beyond the barrow ditches the irrigated corn stood up eight feet tall, darkly green and heavy. The grain elevators in the distance showed tall and white in town beside the railroad tracks. It was a bright warm day with the wind coming hot out of the south.

In Holt they turned onto US 34 and stopped at the Gas and Go where Main Street intersected the highway. The McPherons got out and stood at the pumps, gassing up both vehicles as Victoria went in to buy them cups of coffee and a Coke for herself and a bottle of juice for the little girl. Ahead of her in line at the cash register a heavy black-haired man and his wife were standing with a young girl and a small boy. She had seen them walking at all hours along the streets of Holt and she had heard the stories. She thought that if it weren't for the McPheron brothers she might be like them herself. She watched as the girl moved to the front of the store and took a magazine from the rack at the plateglass windows and flipped through it with her back turned away as if she were not related in any manner to the people at the counter. But after the man had paid for a box of cheese crackers and four cans of pop with food stamps, she put the magazine back and followed the rest of her family out the door.

When Victoria came out, the man and the woman were standing in the tarred parking lot deciding something between themselves. She couldn't see the girl or her brother, then turned and saw they were standing together at the corner under the traffic light, looking up Main Street toward the middle of town, and she went on to where Raymond and Harold were waiting for her at the car.



It was shortly after noon when they drove down the ramp off the interstate and into the outskirts of Fort Collins. To the west, the foothills rose up in a ragged blue line obscured by yellow smog blown up from the south, blown up from Denver. On one of the hills a white A was formed of whitewashed rocks, a carryover from when the university's teams were called the Aggies. They drove up Prospect Road and turned onto College Avenue, the campus was all on the left side with its brick buildings, the old gymnasium, the smooth greens lawns, and passed along the street under the cottonwoods and tall blue spruce until they turned onto Mulberry and then turned again and then located the apartment building set back from the street where the girl and her daughter would now live.

They parked the car and the pickup in the lot behind the building, and Victoria went in with the little girl to find the apartment manager. The manager turned out to be a college girl not unlike herself, only older, a senior in sweatshirt and jeans with her blonde hair sprayed up terrifically on her head. She came out into the hallway to introduce herself and began at once to explain that she was majoring in elementary education and working as a student teacher this semester in a little town east of Fort Collins, talking without pause while she led Victoria to the second-floor apartment. She unlocked the door and handed over the key and another one for the outside door, then stopped abruptly and looked at Katie. Can I hold her?

I don't think so, Victoria said. She won't go to everybody.

The McPherons brought up the suitcases and the boxes from the car and set them in the small bedroom. They looked around and went back for the daybed and high chair.

Standing in the door, the manager looked over at Victoria. Are they your grandfathers or something?

No.

Who are they? Your uncles?

No.

What about her daddy then? Is he coming too?

Victoria looked at her. Do you always ask so many questions?

I'm just trying to make friends. I wouldn't pry or be rude.

We're not related that way, Victoria said. They saved me two years ago when I needed help so badly. That's why they're here.

They're preachers, you mean.

No. They're not preachers. But they did save me. I don't know what I would've done without them. And nobody better say a word against them.

I've been saved too, the girl said. I praise Jesus every day of my life.

That's not what I meant, Victoria said. I wasn't talking about that at all.



The McPheron brothers stayed with Victoria Roubideaux and the little girl throughout the afternoon and helped arrange their belongings in the rooms, then in the evening took them out to supper. Afterward they came back to the rented apartment. When they were parked in the lot behind the building they stood out on the pavement in the cool night air to say good-bye. The girl was crying a little again now. She stood up on her toes and kissed each of the old men on his weathered cheek and hugged them and thanked them for all they had done for her and her daughter, and they each in turn put their arms around her and patted her awkwardly on the back. They kissed the little girl. Then they stood back uncomfortably and could not think how to look at her or the child any longer, nor how to do much else except leave.

You make sure to call us, Raymond said.

I'll call every week.

That'll be good, Harold said. We'll want to hear your news.

Then they drove home in the pickup. Heading east away from the mountains and the city, out onto the silent high plains spread out flat and dark under the bright myriad indifferent stars. It was late when they pulled into the drive and stopped in front of the house. They had scarcely spoken in two hours. The yardlight on the pole beside the garage had come on in their absence, casting dark purple shadows past the garage and the outbuildings and past the three stunted elm trees standing inside the hogfencing that surrounded the gray clapboard house.

In the kitchen Raymond poured milk into a pan on the stove and heated it and got down a box of crackers from the cupboard. They sat at the table under the overhead light and drank down the warm milk without a word. It was silent in the house. There was not even the sound of wind outside for them to hear.

I guess I might just as well go up to bed, Harold said. I'm not doing any good down here. He walked out of the kitchen and entered the bathroom and then came back. I guess you've decided to sit out here all night.

I'll be up after a while, Raymond said.

Well, Harold said. All right then. He looked around. At the kitchen walls and the old enameled stove and through the door into the dining room where the yardlight fell in through the curtainless windows onto the walnut table. It feels empty already, don't it.

Empty as hell, Raymond said.

I wonder what she's doing now. I wonder if she's all right.

I hope she's sleeping. I hope her and that little girl are both sleeping. That'd be the best thing.

Yes, it would. Harold bent and peered out the kitchen window into the darkness north of the house, then stood erect. Well, I'm going up, he said. I can't think what else I'm suppose to do.

I'll be up shortly. I want to sit here a while.

Don't fall asleep down here. You'll be sorry for it tomorrow.

I know. I won't. Go ahead on. I won't be long.

Harold started out of the room but stopped at the door and turned back once more. You reckon it's warm enough in that apartment of hers? I been trying to think. I can't recollect a thing about the temperature in them rooms she rented.

It seemed like it was warm enough to me. When we was in there it did. If it wasn't I guess we'd of noticed it.

You think it was too warm?

I don't guess so. I reckon we'd of noticed that too. If it was.

I'm going to bed. It's just goddamn quiet around here is all I got to say.

I'll be up after a bit, Raymond said.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

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.

FROM THE CRITICS

Michiko Kakutani - The New York Times

… if a sense of d￯﾿ﾽj￯﾿ﾽ vu dogs the reader of this book, the novel also showcases the qualities that made Plainsong such a seductive performance. It's not just that readers of Plainsong will want to find out what has happened to Raymond and Harold McPheron and their neighbors. It's that Mr. Haruf makes us care about these plain-spoken, small town folks without ever resorting to sentimentality or clich￯﾿ﾽs. Instead, he uses their own language ￯﾿ﾽ simple, laconic and uninflected with irony or contemporary slang ￯﾿ﾽ to capture the mood and mores of the town.

Newsday

This novelist writes with such unabashed wonder before life's mysteries, such compassion for frail humanity that he seems to have issued from another time, a better place. --Dan Cryer

Chicago Sun-Times

In creating a place whose people are tethered to each other by history and emotion as much as place, Haruf's work is now competing with Faulkner's Mississippi, Sherwood Anderon's Midwest, and Wallace Stegner's northern California. --Mark Athitakis

Cleveland Plain Dealer

Masterful... A full and satisfying novel complete unto itself [that] might be even more emotionally powerful than its predecessor. --Karen Sandstrom

Christian Science Monitor