Plainsong is a bestselling novel by Kent Haruf

Kent Haruf

Kent Haruf is an award-winning American novelist.-Life:Haruf was born in Pueblo, Colorado, the son of a Methodist minister...

. Set in the fictional town of Holt, Colorado

Colorado

Colorado is a U.S. state that encompasses much of the Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains...

, it tells the interlocking stories of some of the inhabitants.

The title comes from a type of unadorned music

Plainsong

Plainsong is a body of chants used in the liturgies of the Catholic Church. Though the Eastern Orthodox churches and the Catholic Church did not split until long after the origin of plainchant, Byzantine chants are generally not classified as plainsong.Plainsong is monophonic, consisting of a...

 sung in Christian churches, and is a reference to both the Great Plains

Great Plains

The Great Plains are a broad expanse of flat land, much of it covered in prairie, steppe and grassland, which lies west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains in the United States and Canada. This area covers parts of the U.S...

 setting and the simple style of the writing.

Plot summary

Maggie is the link between many of the other characters and strands of the novel. She introduces Victoria to the McPheron brothers, and has a romantic relationship with Tom.

The novel was adapted in 2004 into a Hallmark Hall of Fame

Hallmark Hall of Fame

Hallmark Hall of Fame is an anthology program on American television, sponsored by Hallmark Cards, a Kansas City based greeting card company. The second longest-running television program in the history of television, it has a historically long run, beginning in 1951 and continuing into 2011...

 TV movie on CBS

CBS

CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...

.

Central characters

• Tom Guthrie, a history teacher whose wife is growing more distant and disturbed.
• Ike and Bobby, Tom's young sons.
• Victoria Roubideaux, one of Tom's teenage pupils. When Victoria becomes pregnant, her alcoholic mother forces her to leave the house.
• Raymond and Harold McPheron, bachelor farmers who give Victoria a home and care for her.
• Maggie Jones, another schoolteacher at the local school who first takes in Victoria, but her dad forces her to kick Victoria out.

Critical reception

The New York Times called it "a novel so foursquare, so delicate and lovely, that it has the power to exalt the reader"
and Salon described reading the book as "like being in an expertly piloted small plane, finding yourself flying low and smooth over the suddenly wondrous world below". Plainsong won the Mountains & Plains Booksellers Award, the Maria Thomas Award in Fiction, and was a finalist for the National Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the New Yorker Book Award.

External links

• Meet the Writers: Kent Haruf Barnes and Noble profile and interview

• The Sheltering Sky New York Times review of Plainsong, Verlyn Klinkenborg, October 3, 1999

• Book review: Plainsong Salon.com, Maria Russo, October 18, 1999