Reading Order
Eventide Reading Order
Eventide (2004) by Kent Haruf is the direct sequel to Plainsong, returning to Holt, Colorado and to the characters established in the earlier novel — Harold and Raymond McPheron, Victoria Roubideaux and her daughter Katie, and Tom Guthrie — while also introducing new Holt characters: DJ, a neglected boy who is left in the care of his grandparents, and the social worker who tries to help him. The title refers to the evening of life — the McPherons are older now, facing the natural end of their long bachelor years on the ranch, and the novel is more elegiac than its predecessor. Eventide continues Haruf's spare, biblical prose style and his portrait of Holt as a community where people are shaped by the landscape and by each other's needs. Where Plainsong was about the formation of unexpected families, Eventide is about endings and the way a community sustains its members through loss. The McPheron brothers' story in Eventide is among the most moving in the Holt trilogy, and the novel confirms that Haruf's fictional world has the coherence and depth of a place that actually exists.
Where to start
Read Plainsong first — Eventide is a direct sequel and assumes familiarity with the characters. Any Vintage paperback of Eventide.
Complete Eventide Book List
- 1Buy
Eventide
Kent Haruf·2004·The novel — the McPheron brothers in their final years, Victoria and Katie, DJ and his grandparents, Tom Guthrie; the direct sequel to Plainsong and the elegiac second movement of the Holt trilogy. - 2Buy
Plainsong
Kent Haruf·1999·The essential predecessor — the McPheron brothers and Victoria's story from the beginning; Eventide requires and rewards knowledge of Plainsong. - 3Buy
Benediction
Kent Haruf·2013·The third Holt novel — Dad Lewis dying of cancer; the completion of the Holt trilogy and the place to go after Eventide for readers who want the full arc of Haruf's Holt world. - 4Buy
Our Souls at Night
Kent Haruf·2015·Haruf's final novel — Addie and Louis in Holt; the coda to his career and to the Holt world; brief, luminous, and written while Haruf was dying. - 5Buy
The Tie That Binds
Kent Haruf·1984·Haruf's debut — the earlier Colorado plains fiction; the companion in his early career. - 6Buy
Gilead
Marilynne Robinson·2004·Robinson's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel — the companion in American fiction about small-town community, mortality, and the moral seriousness of ordinary lives; John Ames's Gilead, Iowa is the most important literary companion to Holt, Colorado. - 7Buy
Olive Kitteridge
Elizabeth Strout·2008·Strout's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel in stories — the Maine coastal companion; Crosby, Maine's community portrait is the northeastern version of Haruf's Holt portraits. - 8Buy
Home
Marilynne Robinson·2008·Robinson's companion to Gilead — Jack Boughton's return to Gilead; the companion in American fiction about family, return, and the specific weight of a small-town community's expectations.
Eventide — Frequently Asked Questions
What is Eventide about?
Eventide returns to Holt, Colorado and to the characters established in Plainsong, primarily the McPheron brothers (Harold and Raymond), now older and facing the natural end of their ranching years. Victoria Roubideaux has her daughter Katie, and the McPherons are grandfathers in everything but name. The novel also introduces new characters: DJ, a neglected boy whose mother has left and who is being raised by his elderly grandparents in increasingly inadequate conditions; Rose Tyler, the social worker who tries to help DJ; and Mary Wells, an elderly widow. The novel traces the way the Holt community sustains and sometimes fails its most vulnerable members across one year.
How does Eventide differ from Plainsong?
Eventide is more elegiac and more focused on endings than Plainsong — it is concerned with what happens to people in the evening of their lives, and the McPheron brothers' story in particular is a meditation on mortality and the passing of a specific way of life. Plainsong was about the formation of unexpected families and the resilience of community; Eventide is about what happens to those communities and families over time. The prose style is the same — spare, direct, biblical — but the tone is quieter and sadder. Eventide is a deeply moving novel, but readers who want the surprise and comedy of the McPherons' first encounter with Victoria should begin with Plainsong.
Do I need to read Plainsong first?
Yes — Eventide is a direct sequel that assumes familiarity with the characters established in Plainsong, particularly the McPheron brothers and Victoria Roubideaux. The emotional weight of the McPherons' story in Eventide depends on knowing their history from Plainsong: who they were before Victoria arrived, what changed in them, and what they have become. Readers who start with Eventide will find a good novel; readers who come to Eventide from Plainsong will find something much more powerful.
What happens to the McPheron brothers?
Without revealing specific plot details: the McPheron brothers' story in Eventide ends in a way that is both inevitable and genuinely devastating — Haruf handles it with the same restraint and care that characterizes his prose throughout, but the emotional impact is significant. The McPherons are the most beloved characters in the Holt trilogy, and Haruf clearly loves them too; their ending is treated with the same respect as everything else in the novel, which is to say with complete honesty and without sentimentality.
What should I read after Eventide?
After Eventide, Benediction (2013) is the third Holt novel and the completion of the trilogy. Our Souls at Night (2015) is the coda to Haruf's career in Holt. For the same spare, community-portrait tradition in American fiction, Marilynne Robinson's Gilead and Home are the most important companions. Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge is the Maine coastal version of Haruf's Holt portraits.
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