Kate Morrison relives childhood events in the small Canadian farming community of Crow Lake, Ont., during a family reunion. When Kate is only seven, her parents are killed in a car accident, and her 19-year-old brother, Luke, abandons academic success to keep the siblings together. Instead, it is Matt, 17 and brilliant, who reluctantly and guiltily agrees to finish high school and go on to college, all the while sharing in the care of Kate and her baby sister, Bo. The violent history of the neighboring Pye family intrudes into the Morrisons' lives, ruining Matt's plans, and it is ultimately Kate who escapes into an academic career.

The author spent much of this book dangling a carrot about what happened, what happened, what happened. In the end, the "carrot" was pretty much suspected all along so was no big surprise. The author did not connect the characters as close together as she tried and their relationship with their neighbors did not seem very important in the end.

This is the tale of an orphaned girl who never attains the capacity for love. From the vantage point of middle age, narrator Kate Vaiden looks back at her life, shattered at the age of 11 by the suicide-murder of her parents. She is raised by her loving aunt and uncle, who themselves have not been successful at parenting. Her cousin Swift is the serpent in Kate's future happiness. A true viper, he poisons the fond memory Kate has of her high school lover, a casualty in the first world war, and impels her to leave home. When she has a son out of wedlock, she lacks the maternal urge and abandons him to the same relatives who raised her. Thirty-five years later, she tries to discover his fate.

Kate gives an honest account of herself as a daughter, niece, young woman, and mother, inducing the reader to like her in spite of her flaws, which are many.

Eventide follows some of the characters from Kent Haruf's Plainsong though it is not necessary to read it in order to follow the action. Mr. Haruf introduces new characters that include a family on welfare & abandonded children. This book is much darker than Plainsong, there is no happy ending -- more of a journey through sorrow & loss.

Plainsong is set in Holt, Colorado, a rural community well outside Denver; the setting is timeless, with only the occasional, fleeting reference to VCRs or pop culture indicating that the book takes place closer to "now" than "then." Tom Guthrie is a high-school teacher left raising two young sons after his depressed and disappointed wife moves to the city. His children bake cookies, ride horses, and run a paper route, but at the same time they almost consciously seek out a cool, hardened, cowboy sense of maturity.

Meanwhile, another teacher helps a pregnant teen disowned by her mother find love and acceptance in two hilariously well-intentioned elderly brothers. The two tentatively take the girl on as a boarder on their cattle farm even though they barely know how to communicate with anyone but each other.

Not a lot happened in this book that was unpredictable, but it was so beautifully written that I didn't care. Plain Song is just a wonderful novel.

A very nice book, populated with good, reliable people. A good book for reaffirming one's faith in humanity, but the characters seem so idealized that it's hard to buy.

A novel about life in a western Colorado town, tole mostly in the POV of a teen-ages boy. But the story is filled with compelling characters -- the boys' mother, 2 old cattlemen, a pregnant teen-age girl, the horses, dogs & cows that are still share the daily lives of the people & the harsh land itself & the demands it makes on the lives of people.

Two bachelor farmer brothers, a pregnant high school girl, two young brothers, and two devoted high school teachers--this is the interesting group of people, some related by blood but most not. Set in the plains of Colorado, east of Denver, the novel comprises several story lines that flow into one. Tom Guthrie, a high school history teacher, is having problems with his wife and with an unruly student at school--problems that affect his young sons, Ike and Bob, as well. Meanwhile, the pregnant Victoria Roubideaux has been abandoned by her family. With the assistance of another teacher, Maggie Jones, she finds refuge with the McPheron brothers--who seem to know more about cows than people.

This is an interesting concept and was well put together. I especially liked the two bachelors and their compassion for Victoria. Growing up, there were two farmer bachelors who lived nearby (sweet, nice gentlemen) and I used their faces as I read this book so it brought the story to life for me.

This novel is told with alternating points of view between a father & daughter. The daughter becomes with a young man from the Hopi Pueblo. Another daughter volunteers for human rights work in Central America. It is a very moving story.

BLURB


REVIEW