Kent Haruf - Plainsong

Pages: 320, Edition: 1st, Hardcover, Knopf

Pages: 301, Edition: Reprint, Paperback, Vintage

General Fiction - Critically acclaimed author Kent Haruf, the recipient of a PEN/Hemingway special citation and a Whiting Award for his debut novel, The Tie That Binds , follows with the ... - Plainsong (Books)

Pages: 301, Edition: Reprint, Paperback, Vintage

Tom Guthrie -- a high school teacher in Holt, Colorado -- faces the problem of raising his two boys, 9 and 10, while their mother retreats first to her bed and then altogether. Victoria Roubideaux, at 17, has the problem of being pregnant with the father run off to Denver and her own mother (whose husband years ago had disappeared, maybe to the Rosebud in South Dakota ) unwilling to have her in the house. From these two starting points comes the most engaging small town novel since Richard Russo s Mohawk, this one set in an ultra-American landscape where peoples fates somehow overcome or indeed are independent of the circumstances of place or station that nonetheless seem so powerful. Joining Guthrie and the girl in this milieu are a variety of striking characters: another teacher who is drawn to helping them both; the McPheron brothers, two old bachelor farmers who take the girl in; a high school asshole and his equally obnoxious parents, bent on extracting revenge from Tom; the runaway would-be father; and,