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2000s: One long last summer in Holt, Colorado
Benediction (Plainsong)
What you need to know before your trail
One long last summer for Dad Lewis in his beloved town, Holt, Colorado. As old friends pass in and out to voice their farewells and good wishes, Dad’s wife and daughter work to make his final days as comfortable as possible, knowing all is tainted by the heart-break of an absent son. Next door, a little girl with a troubled past moves in with her grandmother, and down town another new arrival, the Reverend Rob Lyle, attempts to mend strained relationships of his own.
Travel Guide
“Holt” Colorado
Colorado
Holt may be fictional in name but it is apparently based on Yuma Colorado – one of Haruf’s residences in the early 1980s.
Sometimes you just want to escape and get away from it all and the landscape of Holt/Yuma Colorado is the place to go. A small community in a small mid western town on flat barren land. In such a small place people know one another and as we get to know them, they come to live and bring the landscape with them off the page. The landscape is their home and they are tied to it – The grumpy farmers in particular were great characters to get to know – bachelors, brothers and struggling to live off the land. And the landscape is part of them all –
“Here was this man Tom Guthrie in Holt standing at the back window in the kitchen of his house smoking cigarettes and looking out over the back lot where the sun was just coming up.”
Booktrail Boarding Pass: Benediction (Plainsong)
Destination : Colorado, Fictional “Holt” Author/Guide: Kent Haruf Departure Time: 2000s
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