Reading Order
Plainsong Reading Order
Plainsong (1999) by Kent Haruf is the novel that brought him national recognition after fifteen years of writing — the story of several people in the fictional small plains town of Holt, Colorado, whose lives intersect over the course of one year: Tom Guthrie, a high school teacher whose wife has retreated into depression and eventually leaves; his two young sons Ike and Bobby, who are trying to understand what is happening to their family; Victoria Roubideaux, a 17-year-old pregnant girl who has been thrown out by her mother and who is taken in by the McPheron brothers; and Harold and Raymond McPheron, two old bachelor ranchers who have never had anything to do with women or children and who agree to take Victoria in because they don't know how to say no. Plainsong is written in a prose style that has been compared to the King James Bible and to Hemingway — spare, direct, rhythmic, with simple declarative sentences that accumulate emotional weight through repetition and juxtaposition rather than through elaboration. The novel is remarkable for its gentleness: it does not sentimentalize its characters but it treats them with genuine care and attention, and its portrait of the Colorado plains — the landscape, the light, the specific texture of life in a small agricultural community — is one of the most concentrated place-portraits in American fiction. Plainsong was followed by Eventide (2004) and Benediction (2013), both set in Holt, Colorado.
Where to start
Plainsong — any Vintage paperback. Best entry to Haruf's fiction and the novel where his prose style is most purely itself. The sequels Eventide and Benediction follow the same community and can be read in any order after Plainsong.
Complete Plainsong Book List
- 1Buy
Plainsong
Kent Haruf·1999·The novel — Tom Guthrie's family, the McPheron brothers, Victoria Roubideaux; Holt, Colorado over one year; National Book Award finalist; the entry point to Haruf's Holt trilogy and to his spare, biblical prose style. - 2Buy
Eventide
Kent Haruf·2004·The companion sequel — the McPheron brothers and Victoria in the years after Plainsong; new Holt characters; the direct continuation of the Plainsong story and the best companion for readers who want to know what became of those characters. - 3Buy
Benediction
Kent Haruf·2013·The third Holt novel — Dad Lewis dying of cancer in Holt; a new set of Holt characters alongside familiar faces; the completion of the Holt trilogy and the novel in which Haruf's themes of mortality and community are most explicitly stated. - 4Buy
Our Souls at Night
Kent Haruf·2015·Haruf's final novel — Addie Moore and Louis Waters, two old widowed neighbors in Holt, who begin sleeping together for company; brief, luminous, written while Haruf was dying of pulmonary fibrosis; the perfect coda to his career. - 5Buy
The Tie That Binds
Kent Haruf·1984·Haruf's debut novel — the Colorado plains story of Edith Goodnough, told by her neighbor Roy Goodnough; the companion in his plains fiction; where Plainsong is the achieved style, The Tie That Binds is the promising early version. - 6Buy
Olive Kitteridge
Elizabeth Strout·2008·Strout's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel in stories — the Maine coastal companion; Crosby, Maine's people are the northeastern version of Holt's people; both Haruf and Strout are masters of the small-community portrait, and both treat their working-class characters with the same combination of clear eyes and genuine care. - 7Buy
Gilead
Marilynne Robinson·2004·Robinson's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel — the companion in American fiction about a specific small midwestern community and the moral and spiritual life it sustains; John Ames's Gilead, Iowa is the most important literary companion to Holt, Colorado in contemporary American fiction. - 8Buy
Empire Falls
Richard Russo·2001·Russo's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel — the companion in American fiction about a specific small-town community; where Haruf's Holt is the quiet, spare version, Russo's Empire Falls is the comic-tragic, more populous version of the same small-community American subject.
Plainsong — Frequently Asked Questions
What is Plainsong about?
Plainsong follows several characters in Holt, Colorado, a small agricultural town on the plains, over the course of one year. Tom Guthrie teaches high school history; his wife has retreated into depression and eventually leaves, and he is left to raise their two young sons Ike and Bobby. Victoria Roubideaux is a 17-year-old high school student who has become pregnant; her mother throws her out, and Tom's colleague Maggie Jones suggests that she might stay with the McPheron brothers — Harold and Raymond, two old bachelor ranchers who have lived their entire lives in the open country outside Holt with no experience of women or children. The McPheron brothers agree to take Victoria in because they don't know how to say no, and the novel traces their improbable household.
What is Haruf's prose style like?
Kent Haruf's prose style is one of the most distinctive in American fiction — spare, direct, rhythmic, with simple declarative sentences that have been compared to both the King James Bible and Hemingway. Haruf uses no quotation marks for dialogue (a technique he shared with Cormac McCarthy), which gives the speech a quality of being part of the flow of the prose rather than separated from it. He uses simple, monosyllabic words, short sentences, and repetition — a sentence structure that accumulates emotional weight through accretion rather than elaboration. The style works against the literary tendency toward metaphor and complexity, and it is supremely suited to its subject: the spare, open landscape of the Colorado plains and the people who live there without pretension.
Why are the McPheron brothers so beloved?
Harold and Raymond McPheron are two of the most beloved characters in contemporary American fiction because of their utter guilelessness — they are exactly what they appear to be, old bachelors who have spent their lives ranching and have never needed to be anything else, and when a pregnant teenager appears in their lives they respond with a combination of terror and generosity that is entirely characteristic. The comedy of the McPherons trying to understand Victoria, buying things for the baby at the hardware store, feeding her too much food — is one of the great comedy-and-tenderness sequences in American fiction. Haruf has said the McPherons are his favorite characters of the ones he created.
What is the Holt trilogy?
The Holt trilogy consists of Plainsong (1999), Eventide (2004), and Benediction (2013), all set in the fictional small Colorado plains town of Holt. The novels share some characters and the same setting but are essentially independent — each can be read as a standalone. Plainsong follows Tom Guthrie, the McPheron brothers, and Victoria Roubideaux. Eventide is a direct sequel that follows many of the same characters into the years after Plainsong. Benediction is set several years later and follows primarily Dad Lewis, a hardware store owner dying of cancer, alongside familiar Holt faces and some new characters. Haruf's final novel Our Souls at Night (2015) is also set in Holt and can be considered a fourth Holt novel.
What should I read after Plainsong?
After Plainsong, Eventide (2004) is the direct sequel and follows the Plainsong characters. Benediction (2013) and Our Souls at Night (2015) complete the Holt world. For American fiction in the same tradition of spare, place-rooted prose and small-community portraits, Marilynne Robinson's Gilead and Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge are the most important companions. For the Colorado plains tradition specifically, Wallace Stegner's Crossing to Safety is an important companion in the sense of place.
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