After his stunning
novel, Our Souls at Night blew me
away, I am on the verge of completing my reading Kent Haruf’s entire
collection. My latest read, Benediction tells the story of the
residents of Holt Colorado in a series of vignettes. The Johnson women—Willa and Alene--and Berta
May and her granddaughter, Alice, and the main characters, Dad Lewis, his wife
Mary, and their daughter Lorraine, are all interesting, thoughtful, kind, and
generous people. The only missing person
is Frank, the son of Dad and Mary. He
disappeared years ago after a conflict with Dad. Frank contacts them from time to time, but
eventually, he disappears for good.
After the bad news
from a doctor, Haruf writes, ‘They drove out from Denver away from the mountains,
back onto the high plains: sagebrush and soapweed and blue grama and buffalo
grass in the pastures, wheat and corn in the planted fields. On both sides of the highway were the gravel
country roads going out away under the pure blue sky, all the roads straight as
the lines ruled in a book, with only a few small isolated towns spread across
the flat open country” (3).
After the visit to the
doctor, Mary collapsed in her living room and was rushed to the hospital. They called their daughter, Lorraine, to come
and help out. Haruf writes, “The next
day, Lorraine drove into Holt on Highway 34 after the sun had already gone down
and the blue street lamps had come on at the corners. It was all familiar to her. She turned north off the highway and drove
along past the quiet night-lighted houses set back behind the front yards, some
of the yards bare of trees or bushes next to vacant lots filled with weeds—tall
sunflowers and redroot and pigweed—and then there was Berta May’s house which
had been there when she was a child, and then their own white house. She got out and went up to the porch, a
pretty woman in her mid fifties with dark hair.
The air was cool and smelled fresh of the country in the evenings out on
the high plains” (15). I have only been
to Colorado twice, but this description recalls all the details of those brief
visits.
Haruf describes
Willa and Alene. He writes, “It was her
way, Willa’s manner and her character to keep the house clean and in good
repair out in the country east of Holy though few people drove by to see it and
almost no one ever visited and entered it.
A white house with blue shutters and a blue shingled roof. The outbuildings were all painted a deep barn
red with white trim snd they were in good condition too though they had not
been used for thirty years, since her husband had died. // She still drove her
car. Her eyes were failing but not so
much nor so fast she was ready to give up driving” (46). There seems to be a favorite color of Haruf’s,
blue, and I will look for this in the last two novels I have.
This story is—like all
of Haruf’s novels—spell-binding and comforting in the goodness of these people. I will be sad to complete my reading of Haruf;
however, this is a collection I will go back to someday. Kent Haruf’s prose is so soft and smooth, I
can hear their gentle voices. Even the
weather receives as much attention as larger details, and I found myself
immersed in the author’s world. Benediction is a novel I found hardest
to put down. Mesmerized is a word I do
not often use, but it aptly applies here.
5 stars
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