Plainsong


Book Description

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.




Eventide


Book Description

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The award-winning, bestselling author of Plainsong returns to the high-plains town of Holt, Colorado, with a novel that unveils the immemorial truths about human beings: their fragility and resilience, their selfishness and goodness, and their ability to find family in one another. • "Storytelling at its best.” —Entertainment Weekly The aging McPheron brothers are learning to live without Victoria Roubideaux, the single mother they took in and who has now left their ranch to start college. A lonely young boy stoically cares for his grandfather while a disabled couple tries to protect their a violent relative. As these lives unfold and intersect, Eventide reveals Kent Haruf as a novelist of masterful authority. “Stunning.... The dry, cold air of Colorado's high plains seems to intensify the light Kent Haruf shines on every character in his masterful novel.... A book of hope, hope as plain and hard-won as Haruf's keenly styled prose.” —O, The Oprah Magazine




A Manual of Plain Song


Book Description




Plainsong for Caitlin


Book Description

Caitlin and Rebecca's world crumbles when they hear of the disaster at sea in which thier father is killed. With meager funds, the sisters leave New Bedford to begin a new life on the western frontier.




Karoo Plainsong


Book Description

This vivid novel, set against a backdrop of apartheid, tells the story of Ada, an illegitimate, unschooled but brilliant pianist who grows up in service to a family of Irish immigrants. As apartheid tightens its grip, she is seduced into an illegal relationship and bears a mixed race child. Forced to flee from the only home she knows, she must carve a life for herself, her daughter and her music in the bleak township that squats on the edge of the Karoo. Torn between love for her surrogate family and outrage at apartheid's sins, she embarks on a dangerous double life as friend - and potential foe - of both black and white. A powerful tale of love, loss and redemption, this is a journey into the soul of a fractured nation. It illustrates two simultaneous but contrasting views of South Africa under apartheid – seen through the eyes of a remarkable black woman who holds on for the miracle. Fans of romance, fiction and history will enjoy this personal tale of woman’s survival in a time of turmoil.




Plainsong Accompaniment


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Plains Song for Female Voices


Book Description

"This narrative, which on its surface is an account of three generations of women (and a few of their men) living on the plains of Nebraska ... only gets more strange and beautiful the more you look at it, like a photograph that slowly reveals its truth under very close inspection."--Introduction, p. [v].




Plain Kate


Book Description

A debut novel that's as sharp as a knife's point. Plain Kate lives in a world of superstitions and curses, where a song can heal a wound and a shadow can work deep magic. As the wood-carver's daughter, Kate held a carving knife before a spoon, and her wooden charms are so fine that some even call her "witch-blade" -- a dangerous nickname in a town where witches are hunted and burned in the square.




The River, the Plain, and the State


Book Description

This book explores the human-engineered flooding of China's Yellow River, and how it affected the state, environment, and inhabitants of the region.




Paradise in Plain Sight


Book Description

"Reflections on finding peace, beauty, and fulfillment in everyday life, illustrated by the author's experiences with tending her new home's venerable but neglected Japanese garden"--