{ "item_title" : "Plainsong", "item_author" : [" Kent Haruf "], "item_description" : "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.Utterly true to the rhythms and patterns of life, Plainsong is a novel to care about, believe in, and learn from.Reviews:Ambitious, but never seeming so, Kent Haruf reveals a whole communityas he interweaves the stories of a pregnant high school girl, a lonely teacher,a pair of boys abandoned by their mother, and a couple of crusty bachelorfarmers. From simple elements, Haruf achieves a novel of wisdom and grace--anarrative that builds in strength and feeling until, as in a choral chant, thevoices in the book surround, transport, and lift the reader off theground.-FROM THE CITATION FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARDA novel so foursquare, so delicate and lovely . . . it has the power toexalt the reader. --The New York Times Book ReviewResonant and meaningful . . . . A song of praise in honor of the lives itchronicles [and] a story about people's ability to adapt and redeem themselves,to heal the wounds of isolation by moving, gropingly and imperfectly, towardcommunity. --Richard Tillinghast, The Washington Post Book WorldA compelling and compassionate novel. . . . [With] his sheer assurance asa storyteller, [Mr. Haruf] has conjured up an entire community, and ineluctablyimmersed the reader in its dramas. --Michiko Kakutani, The New YorkTimesA work as flawlessly unified as a short story by Poe or Chekhov.--Jon Hassler, Chicago TribuneHaunting, virtuosic, inimitable. --Sarah Saffian, San FranciscoChronicleIf the novelist invents a world, then Mr. Haruf has shaped a place ofenormous goodness... The story itself--spare, unsentimental, rooted inaction--honors the values of the community it describes. --Lisa Michaels,A moving look at our capacity for both pointless cruelty and simpledecency, our ability to walk out of the wreckage of one family and build astronger one where that one used to stand. --Jeff Giles, NewsweekA work as flawlessly unified as a short story by Poe or Chekhov.--Jon Hassler, Chicago Tribune", "item_img_path" : "https://covers3.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/0/37/570/585/0375705856_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "18.00", "online_price" : "18.00", "our_price" : "18.00", "club_price" : "18.00", "savings_pct" : "0", "savings_amt" : "0.00", "club_savings_pct" : "0", "club_savings_amt" : "0.00", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "18.00" } }

Overview

Customers Also Bought

Details