Shall we peer again into Kent Haruf’s world?
Just outside Holt at the McPherons’ farm, all the people we’ve grown fond of—Ike, and Bobby, Harold and Raymond, Maggie and Tom, Victoria and her baby—gather. Outdoors, the men talk, children play, while, inside women prepare a holiday meal. Meanwhile, barn swallows floating on a cool breeze of an evening let us know that all these folk—after all their searchings, shiftings, and yearnings—have finally found a haven, family, with each other.
You know, this ending just feels like somewhere I’d like to be and with people I’d like to be with (well, ok, I might not want to be inside cooking, but that’s just me).
Remembering the way Plainsong began, with broken families, lonely people, with meanies and bullies—I feel reassured by this ending. With this ending, Haruf realizes for us an actual plainsong—that kind of musical event that starts as a series of disjointed voices yet resolves, finally, harmonically, chorically, in unison. Are you reassured by this ending? Do you believe in it?
Ah, well. Like all books, and I guess discussions of them, Plainsong comes to its end.
But, hold on! Up next in our exploration of a High Plains Sense of Place is another excellent book: a finalist for a Pulitzer, Sam Gwynne’s Empire of the Summer Moon. Non-fiction, but fast-paced, richly descriptive, and fascinating, it chronicles conficts between the Comanche and homesteaders during the late 19th century. It’s good history, but don’t let that scare you away…I kept interrupting my reading of Empire to shout out to friends (or just my cats, depending on the time of day) – hey, did you know this about the Comanche and horses? Did you know this about Colt revolvers? What about these rogue Texas Rangers? And, wow! Quanah Parker…
