Author Guide · Literary Fiction
Books Written by
Kent Haruf was 41 when a literary magazine accepted his first short story. He wrote his first drafts blind, typing with a stocking cap pulled over his eyes, and he set almost all his fiction in Holt, an invented town on the plains of eastern Colorado modelled on the small towns where his father, a Methodist minister, had moved the family. His third novel, Plainsong (1999), was a finalist for the National Book Award and sold more than 800,000 copies in five years. In the spring of 2014, ill with an incurable lung disease, he wrote his last novel at a chapter a day; it came out after his death that November. This guide covers his 7 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 7 key books · 1984–2015 · Updated October 2026
ClickTap a spine to jump to that book below.
Quick answer
Kent Haruf published six novels and one book of prose and photographs. His best-known book is Plainsong (1999), the first of three linked novels with Eventide (2004) and Benediction (2013); his last, Our Souls at Night (2015), was filmed with Robert Redford and Jane Fonda. Start with Plainsong. Below are all seven books in order and the order to read the Holt novels in.
Where to Start with Kent Haruf
If you want his defining book
→ Plainsong (1999) — the first Plainsong novel, and the way into Holt.
If you want something short
→ Our Souls at Night (2015) — under 200 pages, about two widowed neighbours.
If you want to stay with the same characters
→ Eventide (2004) — the McPheron brothers and Victoria, after Plainsong.
If you want where it all began
→ The Tie That Binds (1984) — his first novel, told by a neighbour.
7 Kent Haruf Books, in Order
The Tie That Binds
In 1977 Sanders Roscoe tells a reporter the life of his neighbour Edith Goodnough, 80, who faces charges over a fire at her farmhouse in which her brother Lyman died. She gave up her life to the farm, to a harsh father, Roy, and later to Lyman, who came home after decades away and needed her care. It received a Hemingway Foundation/PEN special citation, and Haruf won a Whiting Award in 1986.
Where You Once Belonged
Pat Arbuckle, editor of the local paper, the Holt Mercury, tells the story of Jack Burdette, the town’s former football hero, who comes home from a convention with a new wife, then disappears with about 150,000 dollars taken from the grain elevator company he manages. Years later he comes back. The book was well reviewed but sold poorly.
Plainsong
Told in alternating chapters set in Holt: Tom Guthrie, a history teacher whose wife has withdrawn from the family, raises his young sons Ike and Bobby; his pupil Victoria Roubideaux, a pregnant teenager thrown out by her mother, is taken in by Harold and Raymond McPheron, two elderly bachelor cattle farmers, with help from the teacher Maggie Jones. It was a finalist for the National Book Award and a bestseller, with more than 800,000 copies sold by 2004. CBS aired a Hallmark Hall of Fame film of it in 2004.
Eventide
The direct sequel to Plainsong. Victoria leaves for college in Fort Collins with her daughter, and the McPheron brothers are alone on the farm until an accident with a bull leaves Raymond by himself. Around them are new Holt families: Luther and Betty Wallace and their children, and DJ Kephart, a boy who looks after his grandfather. It won the Colorado Book Award.
West of Last Chance
His only book outside fiction: large-format colour photographs of the High Plains by the photographer Peter Brown, with short prose pieces by Haruf on the region’s people, history and weather. The project won the Dorothea Lange–Paul Taylor Prize from Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies in 2005, before the book was published by W. W. Norton.
Benediction
Dad Lewis, who owns the hardware store in Holt, has terminal cancer and only months to live. His wife Mary and their daughter Lorraine care for him; their son Frank, long estranged, stays away. Around them are a girl who has come to live with her grandmother next door, and a new minister whose sermon upsets his congregation. It completes the trilogy begun with Plainsong, though with new characters, and was shortlisted for the 2014 Folio Prize.
Our Souls at Night
Addie Moore, a widow in her seventies, asks her neighbour Louis Waters, a widower, whether he would come and spend the nights with her, just to talk in bed in the dark. The town gossips and her son disapproves, and for a time they look after her grandson Jamie. Haruf wrote it in 2014, a chapter a day, after telling his wife Cathy he would write “a book about us”; it was published after his death. Netflix released the film, with Robert Redford and Jane Fonda, in 2017.
In What Order to Read Kent Haruf
All six novels are set in Holt, Colorado, or in Holt County around it, but only three are a true sequence. Plainsong (1999) and Eventide (2004) follow the same people, the McPheron brothers, Victoria Roubideaux and Tom Guthrie, and should be read in that order. Benediction (2013) is the third book of the trilogy, but it has a new cast and can be read on its own.
The Tie That Binds (1984), Where You Once Belonged (1990) and Our Souls at Night (2015) stand alone. Reading everything in publication order lets you watch Holt fill up, from the first-person storytelling of the first two books to the spare, shifting viewpoints of the later ones; West of Last Chance (2008) shows the real plains behind the invented town.
A reading path
1. Plainsong (1999)
2. Eventide (2004)
3. Benediction (2013)
4. Our Souls at Night (2015)
5. The Tie That Binds (1984)
The years · 1943–2017
Quick facts about Kent Haruf
- Known for
- Quiet, plainly written novels about ordinary people in Holt, an invented small town on the high plains of eastern Colorado.
- 1943
- Born in Pueblo, Colorado
- 1965
- Peace Corps teacher in Turkey
- 1984
- The Tie That Binds, his first novel
- 1999
- Plainsong
- 2017
- Our Souls at Night filmed
- Born
- 24 February 1943, Pueblo, Colorado; his father was a Methodist minister
- Died
- 30 November 2014, Salida, Colorado, aged 71
- Education
- Nebraska Wesleyan University (BA 1965); Iowa Writers’ Workshop (MFA 1973)
- Taught
- Nebraska Wesleyan University, then Southern Illinois University Carbondale
- Married
- Virginia Koon (1967, divorced); Cathy Dempsey, a high school classmate, in 1995
- Honours
- Whiting Award (1986); National Book Award finalist (1999); Wallace Stegner Award (2012)
The red mark is 1999: Plainsong, the novel that made Holt known.
How Kent Haruf Writes: Plain Sentences, One Small Town
Haruf drafted without looking. From Plainsong on, he typed his first drafts with a stocking cap pulled down over his eyes, so that he could not stop to judge what he had written, then revised on a manual typewriter for detail and punctuation. He said he read a passage of an author he admired, Faulkner or Chekhov, before starting each day.
His prose is spare: short declarative sentences, concrete farm and town detail, and dialogue set without quotation marks. The narrators rarely explain what characters feel; they show what people do, the meal cooked, the cattle fed, the ride offered. Critics praised the plainness, and some, like Joyce Carol Oates on Plainsong, found the kindness of his characters close to sentimental.
Nearly everything happens in Holt, which he based on Yuma and the other small towns of northeastern Colorado where he grew up. The first two novels are told by one local voice; from Plainsong on, chapters move between several households whose lives cross. His recurring subjects are loneliness and the people who step in: two old bachelor brothers who take in a pregnant girl, neighbours who sit with the dying, a widow who asks a widower to keep her company at night.
Frequently asked questions about Kent Haruf’s books
How many books has Kent Haruf written?
Seven: six novels, from The Tie That Binds (1984) to Our Souls at Night (2015), and West of Last Chance (2008), a book of prose and photographs made with the photographer Peter Brown. His short stories and essays have not been collected in a book.
What are Kent Haruf’s books in order?
The Tie That Binds (1984), Where You Once Belonged (1990), Plainsong (1999), Eventide (2004), West of Last Chance (2008, with Peter Brown), Benediction (2013) and Our Souls at Night (2015).
What order should I read the Plainsong trilogy in?
Plainsong (1999), then Eventide (2004), then Benediction (2013). Eventide is a direct sequel and continues the story of the McPheron brothers and Victoria Roubideaux. Benediction is also set in Holt but has new main characters, so it works on its own. The other three novels are set in Holt too but are not part of the trilogy.
Where should I start with Kent Haruf?
Plainsong. It is his best-known novel and the first of the trilogy, and it introduces Holt and the people who return in Eventide. If you want something shorter, Our Souls at Night is under 200 pages.
What is Kent Haruf’s most famous book?
Plainsong (1999), a finalist for the National Book Award and a bestseller that sold more than 800,000 copies by 2004. Our Souls at Night (2015) became widely known through the 2017 Netflix film.
Is Holt, Colorado, a real place?
No. Holt and Holt County are invented. Haruf based the town on Yuma and the other small towns on the plains of northeastern Colorado where his family lived when he was a boy.
Is Our Souls at Night a film?
Yes. The film, directed by Ritesh Batra and starring Robert Redford as Louis Waters and Jane Fonda as Addie Moore, premiered at the Venice Film Festival on 1 September 2017 and was released on Netflix on 29 September 2017.
Was Plainsong made into a film?
Yes, a television film for the Hallmark Hall of Fame, aired on CBS in 2004, with America Ferrera as Victoria. Haruf disliked it and called it “pablum”. The Denver Center Theatre Company later staged Plainsong, Eventide and Benediction as plays.
When did Kent Haruf die?
On 30 November 2014, at home in Salida, Colorado, aged 71, from interstitial lung disease diagnosed earlier that year. He finished Our Souls at Night before he died, and it was published in 2015.
Did Kent Haruf win any major prizes?
He won a Whiting Award in 1986 and the Wallace Stegner Award in 2012. Plainsong was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1999, and Benediction was shortlisted for the Folio Prize in 2014.
Footnotes
- Kent Haruf — Wikipedia
- Plainsong (novel) — Wikipedia
- Our Souls at Night (film) — Wikipedia
- Kent Haruf: Home on the Plains — Publishers Weekly, 1999
- Cathy Haruf on Our Souls at Night — Pan Macmillan
- About Kent Haruf — honorkentharuf.org
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“I have something like a holy connection to that part of the world.”
— Kent Haruf on the Great Plains, interview with Publishers Weekly (1999)
If this shelf interested you, the full bookshelf has more: reading lists by theme, author guides, and notes on what is actually worth your time.
Browse the full bookshelf Get book recommendations