Plainsong

National Book Award Finalist

A heartstrong story of family and romance, tribulation and tenacity, set on the High Plains east of Denver.

In the small town of Holt, Colorado, a high school teacher is confronted with raising his two boys alone after their mother retreats first to the bedroom, then altogether. A teenage girl--her father long since disappeared, her mother unwilling to have her in the house--is pregnant, alone herself, with nowhere to go. And out in the country, two brothers, elderly bachelors, work the family homestead, the only world they've ever known. From these unsettled lives emerges a vision of life, and of the town and landscape that bind them together--their fates somehow overcoming the powerful circumstances of place and station, their confusion, curiosity, dignity and humor intact and resonant. As the milieu widens to embrace fully four generations, Kent Haruf displays an emotional and aesthetic authority to rival the past masters of a classic American tradition.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 08/22/2000
ISBN: 9780375705854
Pages: 320
Weight: 0.54lbs
Size: 8.00h x 5.38w x 0.70d
Award: L.A. Times Book Prize - Nominee

Review Citations: Entertainment Weekly 09/29/2000 pg. 124
New York Times 10/01/2000 pg. 28
New York Times 12/03/2000 pg. 109
ALA Best Books Young Adults 01/01/2001 pg. 1366
Newsweek 10/12/2009 pg. 54
Entertainment Weekly 09/04/2015 pg. 44

Accelerated Reader Quiz #/Name: 44559 / Plainsong
Reading Level: 4.6 / Interest Level: Upper Grade / Point Value: 13