A Novel in The Plain Style

Haruf's novel is an elegantly sparse description of a series of colliding lives in a small town on the eastern Colorado plains. A high school girl becomes pregnant and is provided shelter by two aging bachelor farmers. The lives of all concerned are transformed in the way that ordinary lives are transformed by acts of kindness and efforts to understand. The glory of the book is its total simplicity. The language is as clear as a mountain stream and every note on every person is right. We quickly know and care about the people because they really are people. Fiction often aspires to the goal of explaining and enriching who we are. Haruf achieves that goal.