Summary: A heartstrong story of family and romance, tribulation and tenacity, set on the High Plains east of Denver. In the small town of Holt, Colorado, a high school teacher is confronted with raising his two boys alone after their mother retreats first to the 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. From these unsettled lives emerges a vision of life, and of the town and landscape that bind them together -- their fates somehow overcoming the powerful circumstances of place and station, their confusion, curiosity, dignity and humor intact and resonant. As the milieu widens to embrace fully four generations, Kent Haruf displays an emotional and aesthetic authority to rival the past masters of a classic American tradition. - Amazon

I fell completely and utterly in love with Harold and Raymond, the two gruff, hardy brothers who take in a pregnant teenage girl. This story had one of my favorite themes: making your own family when your blood relatives have failed you. That part of the story spoke to me much more than the storyline centered around the father trying to raise two sons alone after his manic depressive wife runs away to Denver. I had to read this book because it is a Colorado staple and I can't go on being a librarian in Colorado without reading it. I enjoyed but I am not sure I am in the mood to pick up the sequel, Evensong, just yet.

One note on the format of the book: it drove me completely nuts that the whole book did not use quotation marks, or dashes, or italics or any other method to distinguish dialogue. I felt that this was truely a draw back to developing the relationship between characters, as I felt that I was reading everyone's thoughts rather than their conversation. Punctuation was invented for a reason, people!