Benediction by Kent Haruf FIC Har

First of all, if you haven’t read Kent Haruf’s Plainsong, drop everything and go do that right now. It’s okay; I’ll wait. When you’re done, don’t be embarrassed if you want to hug the book. I did.

Good. Now that that’s out of the way, we can talk about Haruf’s latest novel, Benediction. Set in the small eastern-Colorado town of Holt, which we have come to know through Haruf’s previous books, Benediction focuses on the final days of Dad Lewis. Dad is the owner of the local hardware store, and the story opens with him learning that he has terminal cancer, with only a few weeks left to live. The book follows Dad, his wife and daughter, his neighbors, friends, and employees, and his church pastor as they cope with the end of one life, while giving the reader the spectrum of lives being lived – a young girl on her first bicycle; teenaged “love”; married couples, widows, spinsters; all navigating the perils of life with and without each other.

Benediction is another fine example of what Haruf does best: character studies, of people we know doing things we recognize in places that feel like home. His prose isn’t flowery or noticeably complex; in fact, it’s simple and direct – much like his main characters.

I love Kent Haruf. His books are comfortable, even as the stories he tells are not.