Benediction

Kent Haruf writes small, gemlike novels, all set in the same town on the high plains of Eastern Colorado, all featuring the same loose set of characters, and all crackling with the quiet poetry of the universal everyday. Benediction is the latest, and like his previous bestsellers Plainsong, Where you Once Belonged and The Tie That Binds, it depicts the ordinary/extraordinary lives of rural Americans in shimmering, lapidary prose.

Benediction opens with Dad Lewis, owner of the town hardware store, being told that he won't live to see the end of summer. As his family and community gather round him during his last days, he's reminded of the heartbreak of an absent son. Meanwhile, a motherless young girl and a troubled clergyman, both newcomers to town, learn to adjust to the rhythms, the closeness and the secrets of life in this small town.

Needless to say, this is a quietly devastating book. But all the while that Haruf is walking you slowly towards the inevitable, his writing is the real star: like Hemingway without the chest-thumping aggression, or Cormac McCarthy without the Old Testament vengeance, his simplest sentences reveal emotional landscapes as grand and wide as the landscapes in which his characters move. Benediction will stay with you long after the last page.