Eventide, by Kent Haruf

(0375411585)

Have I mentioned I love this author?

I did something with this book that I used to do as a kid, and rarely feel the call to do as an adult: I put it down, consciously, very often so that I wouldn't finish it too soon. I could have gobbled it up in probably 4 hours reading; it's not a difficult read in terms of language or plot. But I s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d it out over 10 days.

This is a sequel to Plainsong. We find Raymond and Harold McPheron preparing to take Victoria off to college in Fort Collins with little Katie. We also meet Betty and Luther, mentally-challenged adults with 2 elementary children they are barely able to care for; DJ Kephart, age 10, who is caring for his elderly and ill grandfather; Mary Hill and her daughters, the man of house in Alaska, apparently permanently; and a host of other folks living in your, er, this small Eastern Colorado town.

The book encompasses all that is life: love, responsibility, horror, choices-that-are-really-no-choices, sadness, many small kindnesses, honor, death, duty, generosity, evil, and surprise. It makes your throat hurt. It makes your eyes water. And that's just the writing The plot is tumbleweeds on the plains, every place and also specifically Holt, Colorado.

Everyone in this book is either someone I know or knew, or someone I've passed outside seedy bars in western towns, or me, sometimes. And yet, people behave the ways they do in this book because they have chosen to be who they are, consciously or not. Mostly not. And that's ok too, because in Holt, we all know that Good is Good and Evil is Evil; even evil knows itself.

"Then, as before, against their will and despite their protestations they were examined in the nurse's room. The boy's pants were lowered, the girl's dress was raised, and seeing what she saw this time the nurse said angrily: Oh Jesus Christ, where is Thy mercy, and left to bring the principal into the room, and the principal took one look and went back to his office and called the sheriff's office at the courthouse and then phoned Rose Tyler at Holt County Social Services."