Book 4 of 2014 – Plainsong – Kent Haruf
At the beginning of his novel Plainsong author Kent Haruf provides a definition of Plainsong
the unisonous vocal music used in Christian church from the earliest times; any simple and unadorned melody or air
And that is just what Haruf’s 2000 novel Plainsong (and Book 4 of 2014) is the simple unadorned story song of a period of time in the lives of seven main characters living in the fictional town of Holt, Colorado. These characters are: the Guthrie’s, schoolteacher Tom Guthrie and his two boys, Ike Bobby who are nine and ten years old respectively, the pregnant seventeen year-old Victoria Roubideaux,Raymond and Harold McPheron, and Maggie Jones.