![]() ![]() Plainsong's characters span four generations of rural folk, mostly teachers and farmers and kids. Like so many books about small-town life, Plainsong is about people living catch-as-catch-can, and catching in the process so much that is heart-wrenching and extraordinary it's a wonder they hold it all in. There is much about Kent Haruf's latest offering that is reminiscent of any other number of novels with the same setting (Texan Joe Coomer's moving A Flatland Fable comes immediately to mind), and yet it's a story about people so soothingly basic - they don't think too much, but they feel plenty - that the genre is inexhaustible. The ones in between have motivations mysterious even to themselves, and they take the abuse of the villainous and the generosity of the saintly all in stride. The bad guys are drunk and bored and mean the good guys are honest and hard-working. Plainsong is set in Holt, Colorado, on the rough, rugged, outstretched plains east of Denver and is infused with its landscape. ![]() ![]() On the plains the sky is bigger and the wind blows harder and this tends to make people some combination of humble, hearty, and resilient as hell. ![]()
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