Creating A Family -- `Plainsong' Is A Story Of How People Unite And Reveals A Prairie Loyalty And Steadfastness That Is Awe-Inspiring.

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"Plainsong" Kent Haruf and Gary Fisketjon, his editor, will discuss their new novel, "Plainsong" at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Elliott Bay Book Co., 101 S. Main St., Seattle. Information: 206-624-6600. -------------------------------

Holt, Colo., the setting for "Plainsong," Kent Haruf's extraordinary new novel, is a landscape swept clean of distractions, just like the author's graceful writing.

Holt is "all flat and sandy . . . the stunted stands of trees at the isolated farm houses, the gravel section roads running exactly north and south like lines drawn in a child's picture book and the four-strand fences rimming the bar ditches . . . and far away on the horizon to the south the low sandhills that looked as blue as plums."

The small-town characters who alternate points of view in "Plainsong" move firmly, if reluctantly, from periods of abandonment and loss to moments of deep union, with unexpected results. Throughout the novel, their talk and demeanor are so straight and sure - like the rural roads they live on - that there is little discrepancy between their private and public selves. As if to underscore the seamlessness between what the people of Holt think and what they say, Haruf even eschews quotation marks in the novel's dialogue.

However, the beauty of "Plainsong," Haruf's third book and a finalist for the National Book Award in fiction, is not contained solely in these niceties of craft, but in the powerful story the novel tells. Each character suffers a break in a defining relationship and must go about rebuilding a life worthy of his or her place in the community.

Main character Tom Guthrie, a high school history teacher who lives with his two young sons, Bobby and Ike, watches helplessly as his severely depressed wife, Ella, moves out, leaving Guthrie to raise the boys on his own.

Concurrently, Victoria Roubideaux, one of Guthrie's students, is thrown out of her own home when her mother discovers her pregnancy. Victoria seeks help from Maggie Jones, another teacher at the high school, whose description of Victoria's surprise appearance at her home late at night encompasses both the girl's hardscrabble background and the somber tone found in the first part of "Plainsong":

"The girl looked tired and sad, the blanket wrapped about her shoulders as though she were some survivor of a train wreck or flood, the sad remnant from some disaster that had passed through and done its damage and gone on."

When Maggie can't keep Victoria, she convinces Harold and Raymond McPheron, two bachelor cattle ranchers, to take her in. The improbable yet devoted family formed by the McPherons and Victoria lies at the narrative and aesthetic heart of "Plainsong."

Theirs is a union born of grief and solitude, as are most of the relationships in the novel. The McPheron brothers were orphaned at an early age, and their loss lumps them with the rest of Haruf's characters. (Harold McPheron describes everyone in "Plainsong" when he worries about his and Raymond's ability to care for Victoria: "Think of us. Crotchety and ignorant. Lonesome. Independent. Set in all our ways. How you going to change now at this age of life?")

As Victoria prepares for her baby, Guthrie finds his domestic and professional life threatened by a spoiled, high school bully. Maggie, who has a romantic interest in Guthrie, must contend with her senile father as well as Guthrie's evasiveness. All of the "Plainsong" characters are reluctant, wary, yet determined to stay open to the possibility of new love.

Illuminating the shifting relationships in "Plainsong" are Haruf's masterful descriptions of the everyday cruelty and innocence of life in the country. The course of Victoria's pregnancy is reflected in the McPherons' expecting heifers, and Ike's horse dies and is autopsied (in a graphic scene) at the same time Ella leaves her sons. Throughout, Haruf gently herds his characters into the idiosyncratic, harmonious clan - complete with Victoria's baby - that graces the fresh Colorado springtime of the final chapter.

Kent Haruf's success in "Plainsong" comes from showing so carefully, so subtly, how people desire to unite, even in our era of unchecked cynicism about lasting love. He lays bare the complex workings behind the modest facade of Holt, revealing a prairie loyalty and steadfastness that is awe-inspiring.