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Eventide
Kent Haruf, 2004
299 pp.

In Brief
One of the most beloved novels in recent years, Plainsong was a best-seller from coast to coast—and now Kent Haruf returns to the High Plains community of Holt, Colorado, with a story of even more masterful authority.

When the McPheron brothers see Victoria Roubideaux, the single mother they’d taken in, move from their ranch to begin college, an emptiness opens before them—and for many other townspeople it also promises to be a long, hard winter. A young boy living alone with his grandfather helps out a neighbor whose husband, off in Alaska, suddenly isn’t coming home, leaving her to raise their two daughters. At school the children of a disabled couple suffer indignities that their parents know all too well in their own lives, with only a social worker to look after them and a violent relative to endanger them further. But in a small town a great many people encounter one another frequently, often surprisingly, and destinies soon become entwined—for good and for ill—as they confront events that sorely test the limits of their resilience and means, with no refuge available except what their own character and that of others afford them.

Spring eventually does reach across the land, and how the people of Eventide get there makes for an engrossing, profoundly moving novel rich in the wisdom, humor, and humanity for which Kent Haruf is justly acclaimed. (From the publisher.)

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About the Author

• Birth—February 24, 1943
• Where—Pueblo, Colorado
• Education—B.A., Nebraska Wesleyan University; M.F.A.,
   Iowa University
• Awards—Whiting Foundation Writer's Award, 1977;
   PEN/Hemingway Foundation Special Citation, 1985; Maria
   Thomas Fiction Award, 1991
• Currently—lives in southern Colorado


Though many readers know Kent Haruf as the author of 1999's acclaimed novel Plainsong, Haruf had already made an auspicious debut with The Tie That Binds in 1984. Where You Once Belonged followed in 1990. Some short stories appeared in literary magazines, but it was another nine years before Haruf surfaced again on the bookshelves.

Despite the long gestation period, Plainsong yielded rich returns. The story weaves together several characters: pregnant 17-year-old Victoria Roubideaux; the McPherons, an elderly pair of cattle rancher brothers who take Victoria in; Tom Guthrie and his two young sons, abandoned by their depressed mother; and a high school teacher who knows them all, Maggie Jones. Each chapter is titled for one of the characters, carrying the reader along with one or another as all of them intersect. Nominated for the National Book Award, Plainsong became a bestseller and was warmly reviewed. "It has the power to exalt the reader," the New York Times Book Review declared.

Plainsong, which derives its title from the unadorned vocal music often sung in Christian churches, is aptly named. The tale is simply told, the action moves slowly, and dialogue resides within the text, unframed by quotation marks. All of Haruf's novels are set in the High Plains community of Holt, in eastern Colorado -- a fictional town much like the ones Haruf grew up in. "In the Plains, things are stripped down to the essentials, and that seems to fit what [Plainsong] is about and that seemed to be an obvious setting for this story," he says in a publisher's interview. The rhythms of nature and simple work are a latticework underlying the author's stories. Like the landscape of the setting, the progression of Haruf's tales is subtle. He is a thoughtful, understated writer who writes with a restrained sympathy for his characters, even when they seem not to warrant much.

Haruf revisited some of Plainsong's characters in Eventide, continuing Victoria's story as she heads off to college and bringing both tragedy and renewal to the McPheron brothers. The theme of unconventional family units continues, as does the mixing of modern urban problems and simple rural life. An 11-year-old orphan cares for his grandfather; a mother of two copes with being abandoned by her husband; and a mentally disabled couple struggle to keep their family intact.

Like his later novels, The Tie That Binds and Where You Once Belonged feature Haruf's straightforward narrative style and rural setting. However, both have a sharper edge and more explosive content, dealing with hard crimes and focusing more on individual characters. Tie focuses on one woman's tragic life story of family sacrifice; Belonged tells about the crimes inflicted on the town of Holt by one of its former residents, an ex-football hero.

Haruf's stories end as openly as they begin; though well crafted and thoroughly imagined, they are not about tight plot construction or surprising twists. Instead, Haruf is more concerned with expressing emotional truths. "Our lives are generally pretty messy," Haruf told the Kansas City Star in a 2000 interview about Plainsong. "What I want to suggest at the end [of the book] is that at this point, at least this day and this point in their lives, all these people have found a place in a small community -- it may even be an extended family -- in which they can connect with other people and find solace and communion."

Extras
Over the years, Haruf has worked as at a variety of places, including: a chicken ranch in Colorado, the Royal Gorge in the Rocky Mountains, a construction site in Wyoming, the railroad tracks in southeastern Montana, a pest control company in Kansas, a rehabilitation hospital in Denver, an orphanage in Montana, a surgery wing in a hospital in Phoenix, a presidential library in Iowa, an alternative high school in Wisconsin, a country school in Colorado, and a college in Nebraska.

Haruf lives with his wife Cathy. Between them, the two have eight children from previous marriages. Haruf has three daughters.

Haruf taught at Southern Illinois University before the profits from Plainsong allowed him to retire and move back to Colorado.

Plainsong was made into a CBS TV movie in 2004. Rachel Griffiths starred as Maggie.

In a 2004 interview with Barnes and Noble editors, Kent Haruf talked about the books that influenced him the most as a writer.

• The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
• The Bear by William Faulkner
• The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
• The Snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway

These four books shocked me when I first read them as a junior in college. I've never gotten over the shock and don't want to. I was shocked, astonished, by the skill on the page; I'd never read anything I liked so much, in terms of craft and story. These books changed my life. I knew after I'd read these books that I wanted to do something with literature from then on. I didn't know what, but I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life in the presence of these books and others. Only later did I realize that I wanted to write. Saul Bellow is reported to have said, "A writer is a reader moved to emulation." That's my story."

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Critics Say. . .
If a sense of déjà vu dogs the reader of this book, the novel also showcases the qualities that made Plainsong such a seductive performance. It's not just that readers of Plainsong will want to find out what has happened to Raymond and Harold McPheron and their neighbors. It's that Mr. Haruf makes us care about these plain-spoken, small town folks without ever resorting to sentimentality or clichés. Instead, he uses their own language — simple, laconic and uninflected with irony or contemporary slang — to capture the mood and mores of the town.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times



This bleak, compassionate book takes up where the author’s widely acclaimed novel “Plainsong” left off, in the windy high-plains country in and around the tiny town of Holt, Colorado. Distress is general: out on their ranch, two stolid elderly brothers discover loneliness after the wayward girl they took in leaves for college; various troubles—illness, death, basic inability to cope—afflict the adults in town; and some young children are set adrift from disintegrating homes, with dangerous consequences. Every action in Holt casts a long shadow, and the gist of Haruf’s story is what happens when those shadows touch. (The results are equal parts grace and calamity.) It’s rare that such slow, deliberate prose is this highly charged, but Haruf’s writing draws power from his sense of character—its limitations and its possibilities—and how it propels action.
The New Yorker



In creating a place whose people are tethered to each other by history and emotion as much as place, Haruf's work is now competing with Faulkner's Mississippi, Sherwood Anderon's Midwest, and Wallace Stegner's northern California.
Mark Athitakis - Chicago Sun-Times



This hardscrabble story kicks up a dust cloud of melancholy that will sting even the most hardened readers' eyes. At the end of some chapters I was left wondering, Who in America can still write like this? Who else has such confidence and such humility?
Ron Charles - Christian Science Monitor



This novelist writes with such unabashed wonder before life's mysteries, such compassion for frail humanity that he seems to have issued from another time, a better place.
Dan Cryer - Newsday



Haruf's follow-up to the critically acclaimed and bestselling Plainsong is as lovely and accomplished as its predecessor. The aging bachelor McPheron brothers and their beloved charges, Victoria and her daughter, Katie, return (though Victoria quickly heads off to college), and Haruf introduces new folks-a disabled couple and their children, an old man and the grandson who lives with him-in this moving exploration of smalltown lives in rural Holt, Colo. Ranchers Raymond and Harold McPheron have spent their whole lives running land that has been in their family for many generations, so when Harold is killed by an enraged bull, worn-out Raymond faces a void unlike any he has ever known. His subsequent first-ever attempts at courtship and romance are almost heartbreaking in their innocence, but after some missteps, he finds unexpected happiness with kind Rose Tyler. Rose is the caseworker for a poor couple struggling so dimly and futilely to better their lives that it becomes painful to witness. Children play crucial roles in the novel's tapestry of rural life, and they are not spared life's trials. But Haruf's characters, such as 11-year-old orphan DJ Kephart, who cares for his retired railroad worker grandfather, and Mary Wells, whose husband abandons her with two young girls, maintain an elemental dignity no matter how buffeted by adversity. And while there is much sadness and hardship in this portrait of a community, Haruf's sympathy for his characters, no matter how flawed they are, make this an uncommonly rich novel. Agent, Sterling Lord Literistic. (May 9) Forecast: Readers will find that what made Plainsong a bestseller-its humanity, its grace and its moving, heartfelt story-shines again in Eventide. With an announced first printing of 250,000 and an author tour, Haruf's latest should do very, very well. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Publishers Weekly



While some characters in this novel are holdovers from Haruf's extremely well-received Plainsong, listeners need not be familiar with the earlier book to become quickly engrossed in the goings-on of these small-town Colorado folk. It is through the author's grace as a writer that we care about every life he touches, no matter how trivial or earth-shattering their concerns, regardless if they are the center of attention or make a cameo appearance. Haruf does a marvelous job of bridging the generations, giving new meaning to words such as friendship and family. There are many different stories here, and Haruf's narrative follows no preset sequence, but listeners should have no trouble picking up the threads. A lot happens in less than a year, but nowhere does he give in to easy melodrama; it's as if we're sitting around a table in a warm country kitchen, eavesdropping on the stories of close and trusted friends. Read by George Hearn, Eventide is highly recommended for all collections. -Rochelle Ratner.
Library Journal




This novel picks up where Plainsong left off, with clear, quiet prose evoking the Holt, Colorado, landscape and dialogue as unassuming and simple as the characters. Readers need not have read the first book, however, to enjoy this one because the threads of those interwoven stories are picked up and joined with the strands of new characters' lives. Victoria, a young unwed mother, leaves the McPheron's ranch, where she was kindly taken in when she was pregnant, to go to college. Shortly afterward, Harold McPheron is killed by an angry bull, and Raymond is left to find his way in the world without his brother. Eventually he meets Rose, a kindhearted social worker who gives Raymond a new lease on life. Meanwhile Rose grapples with a difficult case involving Betty and Luther, inadequate parents who cannot keep Hoyt, Betty's uncle, from abusing their two children. Hoyt also turns his cruelty on DJ, a quiet young man saddled with caring for his surly grandfather and whose only friend is Dena. After her mother's preoccupation with her failing love life results in a car accident that badly scars Dena, she and her family suddenly move away, leaving DJ alone once more. Older teens will appreciate the continuation of these simply told stories, but they might be disappointed that Victoria's story is not as much of a focus this time around. Nonetheless the characters are engaging and their stories beautifully told. Haruf skillfully reveals the importance of intergenerational relationships and the powerful influence that the young and old can have on each other. He also perfectly captures the pace and feel of small towns that brim with life despite their size, transforming the town of Holt into a character to be cherished, remembered, and loved. (Hard to imagine it being any better written; Will appeal with pushing...to grades 10 to 12; Adult-marketed book recommended for Young Adults).
Valerie Ott - VOYA



Haruf sings the second verse of his moving hymn to life on America's great plains. Eventide is a sequel to the 1999 Plainsong, Haruf's wonderfully straight-talking debut novel about life and work in and around Holt, Colorado, a withering town long miles from Denver and light-years from the coasts. Some of the characters from that first story return in major and minor roles. Harold and Raymond McPheron, a pair of aging bachelor brothers who work the ranch on which they were born, take center stage, and the Guthries, schoolteacher Tom and his motherless boys, move to the wings. Victoria Roubideaux, the young high-school girl who moved in with the McPherons to escape her mother and find refuge during her pregnancy is moving off to Fort Collins with her daughter to go to college. The ranchers, who dearly love her and her daughter, will be bereft in their absence but they have made the move possible. They resume their hard, lonely work, setting great store by Victoria's weekly phone calls. In town, three small families are finding their own hard lives harder. Welfare recipients Betty and Luther Wallace, a couple who should probably be in a group home, are unable to protect their two children either from schoolyard cruelty or from Betty's sadistic prison-bound uncle Hoyt. Mary Wells and her two daughters are living on money sent from Mary's husband in Alaska, but the marriage is broken and Mary will lose her pride and her domestic order. Down the street, ten-year-old DJ Kephart has sole care of his grandfather, a retired railroad man close to the end of a tough life. DJ's sole comfort is his friendship with Dena Wells, Mary's elder daughter. When a bad-tempered bull kills Harold McPherson,Raymond is nearly numb, leaving him vulnerable to-of all things-romance. Melancholy truths set to gorgeous melody.
Kirkus Review

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Book Club Discussion Questions
In many ways, Eventide is about the pain of separation. As the novel opens, Victoria Roubideaux is preparing to move away from the McPherons' ranch to attend college in Fort Collins. Harold and Raymond had taken her in back when she was three months pregnant and turned out of her home. Victoria and her daughter, Katie, now more than a year old, have come to occupy a central place in the McPherons' lives. Running parallel to this narrative are several other stories of loss and separation. Betty and Luther Wallace, poor and ill-equipped to raise their children, face losing them to foster care. Mary Wells is raising her two young girls alone, while her husband works in Alaska. DJ Kephart has lost his mother and has never known his father. And all of these characters face even greater losses to come. How they respond to those-losses with sadness, outrage, bitter anguish, or hard-won stoicism-reveals the full depth and range of human emotion. But Eventide tells of connection as well as separation, of community as well as loneliness, of compassion as well as cruelty. Of all the characters, Raymond McPheron may suffer the most devastating loss, but his spirit of self-effacing generosity survives, and he meets someone who offers him a happiness he has never before experienced.

In writing that is as moving as any in contemporary fiction today, Kent Haruf offers an unforgettable portrait not only of the small town of Holt, Colorado, and the fascinating people who live there but of the human condition itself, in all its brilliance and frailty.

1. Two elderly bachelors living on an isolated ranch in eastern Colorado-not what one would immediately consider an exciting premise for a work of fiction. How does Kent Haruf transform the mundane materials of his characters and setting into such an emotionally compelling story?

2. In what ways does Eventide deepen readers' relationships with those characters who also inhabit Haruf's previous novel Plainsong? How are the two novels alike? In what ways are they significantly different?

3. What kind of men are Harold and Raymond McPheron? What are their most distinctive and appealing characteristics? What makes them so likable?

4. Why does Haruf interweave, in alternating chapters, the stories of the McPheron brothers and Victoria Roubideaux, Luther and Betty Wallace and Rose Tyler, Hoyt Raines, DJ Kephart and his grandfather, and Mary Wells and her daughters? How are their lives interconnected? In what ways do they represent a wide spectrum of American society?

5. When Tom Guthrie and his sons finish separating the cows and their calves, Ike Guthrie says, "They make an awful lot of noise. . . . They don't seem to like it much." To which Tom replies, "They never do like it. . . . I can't imagine anything or anybody that would like it. But every living thing in this world gets weaned eventually" [p. 155]. How does this statement illuminate the central themes of Eventide? In what ways is the novel about the pain of separation, of getting "weaned"?

6. Haruf's writing, like the speech of the characters he writes about, is restrained, as when Raymond calls Victoria to tell her of Harold's death:
Honey, I got something to tell you.
Oh, no, she said. Oh no. No.
I'm just afraid I do, he said. And then he told her [p. 80].
Why does Haruf end the conversation there? Why is it more moving to let the reader imagine the rest of the conversation than to describe it more completely? Where else in the novel does Haruf show this kind of reserve?

7. When Del Gutierrez tells Raymond that he can't see how just one man can run the ranch-"It seems like too much for one person to do"-Raymond responds, "What else you going to do?" [p. 233]. How does this response typify Raymond's attitude about life and his own predicament?

8. When Raymond worries that they might have to wait until seven-thirty to have dinner, Rose says, "You wouldn't do very well in New York or Paris, would you," and Raymond replies: "I wouldn't even do very good in Fort Morgan" [p. 255]. Why wouldn't Raymond do well in a big city? In what ways is he suited to, and a product of, the rural life of the high plains?

9. Why has Haruf included a character like Hoyt Raines in the novel? What does he add to the emotional texture of the book?

10. Parent-child relationships are important in Eventide. What kinds of behavior does the novel dramatize between parents (or grandparents or surrogate parents) and children? How are children seen and treated by their elders in the book? What are the best and worst examples of parent-child relationships in Eventide?

11. Near the end of the novel, Luther and Betty Wallace's children are placed in a foster home. Why does the court make this decision? Is it the right one? Does Haruf intend for readers to regard Luther and Betty critically, sympathetically, or with some mixture of feelings?

12. Why is the budding romance between Rose and Raymond so appealing? Why must Raymond be tricked into meeting her? Why are they so drawn to each other?

13. Eventide ends with Raymond and Rose sitting together quietly, "the old man with his arm around this kind woman, waiting for what would come" [p. 300]. Why is this a satisfying way to end the novel? What is likely to come for them? Literary works often imply, if only implicitly, a set of values to live by. What attitudes and values does Eventide seem to hold up for emulation?