Recommendations
Books Like Benediction by Kent Haruf
For readers of the great novel of dying in community
If you loved Benediction — Dad Lewis's final weeks in Holt, his wife Mary's steady presence, his estranged son Frank, the preacher Lyle's honest sermon — these novels share the same emotional territory: dying in a specific place and community, the possibility of forgiveness at the end of a life, and the question of what a life amounts to.
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Buy on AmazonPlainsong
by Kent Haruf
The essential companion — the first Holt novel; the entry to the Holt world and the novel that established Haruf's reputation; reading Plainsong before Benediction enriches the Holt setting and its community.
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Buy on AmazonEventide
by Kent Haruf
The second Holt novel — the direct sequel to Plainsong; reading the trilogy in order gives the fullest picture of Holt and its people, and Benediction is richest after Plainsong and Eventide.
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Buy on AmazonOur Souls at Night
by Kent Haruf
Haruf's final novel — the luminous coda to his career; Addie and Louis's late love is the companion to Dad Lewis's dying; both are about what is still possible at the end of a life in Holt, Colorado.
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Buy on AmazonGilead
by Marilynne Robinson
Robinson's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel — the essential literary companion; John Ames dying in Gilead, Iowa, writing to his young son, is the companion meditation on mortality, community, and the meaning of a life lived in a specific small American place.
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Buy on AmazonThe Remains of the Day
by Kazuo Ishiguro
Ishiguro's Booker Prize-winning novel — the companion in literary fiction about a life reviewed at its end; Stevens's retrospective account of what he did and didn't do is the British, more mournful version of Dad Lewis's dying review of his life.
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Buy on AmazonOlive Kitteridge
by Elizabeth Strout
Strout's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel in stories — the Maine coastal companion in the community portrait tradition; Olive Kitteridge's Crosby, Maine is the northeastern version of Holt, Colorado; both novels use the small community to think about mortality and what remains.
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Buy on AmazonEmpire Falls
by Richard Russo
Russo's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel — the companion in American fiction about specific small-town communities; where Benediction's Holt is quiet and spare, Empire Falls is comic-tragic and populous; both novels end with acts of violence and loss that the community must absorb.
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Buy on AmazonCrossing to Safety
by Wallace Stegner
Stegner's novel about two couples and their long friendship — the companion in American fiction about the long view of a life and what friendship and loyalty sustain through loss; the end of the long friendship is the companion meditation to Dad Lewis's dying.
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