Plainsong

In the small town of Holt, Colorado, a high school teacher is confronted with raising two young boys alone after their mother retreats first to her bedroom, then altogether. A teenage girl, her father long since disappeared, her mother unwilling to have her in the house -- is pregnant, alone herself, with nowhere to go. And out in the country, two brothers, elderly bachelors, work the family homestead, the only world they've ever known. As the milieu widens to embrace four generations, Kent Haruf displays an emotional and aesthetic authority to rival the past masters of a classic American tradition.