Archive - March 9, 2013

Kent Haruf (Turkey 1965-67) is out with the fifth book in his cycle of novels set in the high plains of Colorado. Knopf has just published Benediction, and it is reviewed in the Sunday March 10, 2013, Book Section of The New York Times. Kent’s earlier, best-selling novels about this close-knit community–Holt, Colorado–are The Tie That Binds, Where You Once Belonged, Plainsong and Eventide. The plot is summed up this way: When Dad Lewis is diagnosed with terminal cancer, he and his wife, Mary, must work together to make his final days as comfortable as possible. Their daughter, Lorraine, hastens back from Denver to help look after him; her devotion softens the bitter absence of their estranged son, Frank, but this cannot be willed away and remains a palpable presence for all three of them. Next door, a young girl named Alice moves in with her grandmother and contends with the . . .