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Kelsey Ford: From the Stacks: J. M. Ledgard's Submergence (0 comment)
Our blog feature, "From the Stacks," features our booksellers’ favorite older books: those fortuitous used finds, underrated masterpieces, and lesser known treasures. Basically: the books that we’re the most passionate about handselling. This week, we’re featuring Kelsey F.’s pick, Submergence by J. M. Ledgard...
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  • Kelsey Ford: Five Book Friday: Year of the Rabbit (1 comment)
  • Kelsey Ford: Powell's Picks Spotlight: Grady Hendrix's 'How to Sell a Haunted House' (0 comment)

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Plainsong

by Kent Haruf
Plainsong

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  • Synopses & Reviews

ISBN13: 9780375705854
ISBN10: 0375705856
Condition: Standard


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Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments

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.

Review

"From the unsettled lives of three people emerges a vision of life, and of the town and landscape that bind them together. Utterly true to the rhythms and patterns of life, Plainsong is a heartfelt story of family and romance, tribulation, and tenacity. "A novel so foursquare, so delicate and lovely, that it has the power to exalt the reader." Verlyn Klinkenborg, the New York Times Book Review

Review

"Ambitious, but never seeming so, Kent Haruf reveals a whole community as 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 bachelor farmers. From simple elements, Haruf achieves a novel of wisdom and grace — a narrative that builds in strength and feeling until, as in a choral chant, the voices in the book surround, transport, and lift the reader off the ground." From the citation for the National Book Award

About the Author

Kent Haruf’s honors include a Whiting Foundation Award, a Stegner Award, a Frank Waters Award, and a special citation from the PEN/Hemingway Foundation. His novel Plainsong won the Mountains & Plains Booksellers Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the New Yorker Book Award. He lives with his wife, Cathy, in his native Colorado.

3.8 4

What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating 3.8 (4 comments)

`
Bill7103 , June 10, 2019
My introduction to Kent Haruf. Bought this copy on June 8/19 at Powell’s Books. Better than I remembered, spare and elegant. A fine writer.

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les imprest , September 04, 2010
I can see why the Boston Globe, NYT, LA Times, et al gave this book such glowing reviews. As an all out insult towards "fly over" America, a series of highlights starring victimhood and ugly white people, angry white men, and a concerted effort at focussing on sex, this boring tome drones on from tragedy to minor tragedy. If Haruth ever lived in small town America, he must have had a terrible childhood, filled with anger and repressed sex. I'm glad I missed it, and wished I'd missed his Freudian nightmare of a book. His near hero was (of course) a put-upon school teacher, everyone else is from Walmart parking lot lore, and an odd pair of elderly brothers (WASP simpletons). The sniggering from the elite who proclaim "Yes, that's America!" can be heard on most every campus, from most any professor. Read a classic, this isn't one of them.

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bentguy1 , January 01, 2010 (view all comments by bentguy1)
A work that hits on all cylinders: setting, characterization, plot development, and ending. But much more than that, it touches on the variant nature of humanity, the falls from grace, the small triumphs and understandings and the murkiness of the heart. Subtle, and closely observed—it's great!

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Jeane , April 02, 2008 (view all comments by Jeane)
This is a quietly elegant portrait of a farming community in Holt, Colorado. It focuses on half a dozen characters: a high school history teacher whose depressed wife leaves him to raise two young boys alone, a shy teenage girl who becomes pregnant and decides to run away from home, and two crusty bachelor brothers who run a farm together. Another teacher in the same school becomes the catylist for all these characters' solitary lives to become intertwined and connected. Plainsong is full of guilt and pain, quiet passion and deeply felt compassion. It is a wonderful portrayal of how people's lives touch one another- for good more than ill.

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Product Details

ISBN:
9780375705854
Binding:
Trade Paperback
Publication date:
08/22/2000
Publisher:
BALLANTINE BOOKS
Series info:
Vintage Contemporaries
Pages:
320
Height:
.70IN
Width:
5.38IN
Thickness:
.75
Series:
Vintage Contemporaries (Paperback)
Number of Units:
1
Copyright Year:
2000
Series Volume:
1992
UPC Code:
2800375705856
Author:
Kent Haruf
Media Run Time:
B
Subject:
Colorado
Subject:
Fiction
Subject:
Family saga
Subject:
Family
Subject:
Literature-A to Z
Subject:
City and town life
Subject:
Domestic fiction

Ships free on qualified orders.
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List Price:$17.00
Used Trade Paperback
Ships in 1 to 3 days
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5Burnside
3Cedar Hills
2Hawthorne
10Local Warehouse

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