Publication Order of Plainsong Books
| Plainsong | 1999 |
| Eventide | 2004 |
| Benediction | 2013 |
Publication Order of Standalone Novels
| The Tie That Binds | 1984 |
| Where You Once Belonged | 1990 |
| Our Souls at Night | 2015 |
Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books
| West of Last Chance (With: Peter Brown) | 2008 |
About Kent Haruf
Kent Haruf (1943 to 2014) was an American novelist from Colorado whose six novels are all set in and around the fictional High Plains town of Holt. He is best known for “Plainsong” (1999), a bestseller and National Book Award finalist, and for his final novel, “Our Souls at Night”, which was published after his death.
Haruf was born in Pueblo, Colorado, the son of a Methodist minister, and grew up in several small towns in the north-east of the state. He graduated in English from Nebraska Wesleyan University in 1965, taught English in Turkey with the Peace Corps, and completed a Master of Fine Arts at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1973. He supported his family with farm and construction work and high school teaching before joining Nebraska Wesleyan as an assistant professor in 1976.
His first novel, “The Tie That Binds”, appeared in 1984, when he was 41. It concerns Edith Goodnough, an elderly Holt County woman who comes under suspicion of murder. “Where You Once Belonged”, narrated by the editor of the town newspaper, followed in 1990. Both were well reviewed but sold poorly.
“Plainsong”, published by Knopf, follows several Holt residents, among them two schoolteachers, a pregnant teenager and the McPheron brothers, a pair of isolated ranchers. It had sold nearly a million copies by 2004 and allowed Haruf to write full time. “Eventide” is a direct sequel, and “Benediction”, about the last months of a hardware store owner with incurable cancer, is generally counted as the third book of a trilogy. Hallmark filmed “Plainsong” for television in 2004, and the Denver Center Theatre Company adapted all three novels for the stage.
Haruf was diagnosed with an incurable lung disease in early 2014. He then wrote “Our Souls at Night”, about two widowed neighbours who begin spending their nights together to keep loneliness at bay, and finished work on it days before he died at home in Salida, Colorado, on 30 November 2014. The novel was published in 2015 and became a 2017 Netflix film starring Robert Redford and Jane Fonda. Haruf also collaborated with Peter Brown on “West of Last Chance” (2008).