Benediction

This 2013 novel, now out in paperback, is Kent Haruf’s fifth. Like his others, it’s set in the small fictional town of Holt, Colo., and like them, it’s written in an elegiac style that is best suggested by the title of his third novel, Plainsong (1999), which was nominated for a National Book Award. Also like them, it’s peopled by a collection of characters whose lives are intertwined and whom circumstances force to adapt to change. The tale lasts for as long as it takes Dad Lewis, the owner of the local hardware store, who has just been diagnosed with terminal cancer, to set his affairs in order before dying. That includes reconciling with his alienated gay son, righting a wrong he committed years earlier and selecting someone to take over the store. Although others with problems of their own enter the picture—a new preacher and his family, an aging mother and daughter, a next-door neighbor and her orphaned granddaughter—this ultimately is a love story about Lewis and his wife of many years, Mary, as they together confront his mortality. Haruf renders his characters with deft strokes; it’s clear he loves them all, even those he doesn’t like much.