Plainsong
The small town of Holt, Colorado, is the setting for Plainsong. And like most small towns, everyone knows everyone else’s business. Victoria’s mother feared this, so kicked Victoria out of the house because she was pregnant and unmarried. What happens to Victoria then becomes the main theme of the story.
Tom Guthrie’s young sons, Ike and Bobby, don’t meet Victoria until the end of the story, but they know the two old farming brothers who finally take Victoria in. Tom and Maggie Jones, who both teach at the Holt High School know her as a student, but Tom has trouble with a boy who insults her in class one day.
When Tom and his wife separate and she moves out of town, Ike and Bobby are pretty much on their own. But on their paper route, they befriend an older crippled woman, who briefly fills their mother’s place.
The problems all of the characters face in this story are very common and realistic. They are also easy for those of us who live in small towns, or wish we lived in small towns, to identify with ourselves. The high point of Kent Haruf’s writing in this novel is his ability to create intrigue in simple, everyday problems, without much violence. Plainsong was published in 1999.