The recap
In the small town of Holt, Colorado, Addie Moore, a widow, walks over one evening to see Louis Waters, a widower she has known for decades only as a neighbor. She has an unusual proposal: that he come and spend some nights with her, not for sex, but for company, lying side by side and talking in the dark until sleep comes. Louis, startled but curious, agrees. Their conversations grow into a late-blooming companionship full of memory, regret and gentle humor, complicated by the arrival of Addie's young grandson, a dog named Bonny, and a town that cannot resist talking. Haruf writes in plain, unhurried sentences, trusting small gestures and ordinary kindness to carry great feeling. It is a short book that can be read in a single evening, yet its portrait of second chances, and of the courage it takes to choose happiness late in life, lingers long after the last page.
Why read it
For anyone who believes it is never too late for love, and for readers who treasure quiet, humane novels that say a great deal in very few words.
Fun facts
- 01
Haruf wrote the first draft in about six weeks in the spring of 2014, during the last months of his life, and kept revising it until his death that November; it was published the following year.
- 02
He told his wife, Cathy, that his final project would be a book about the two of them, and she typed the first draft into the computer.
- 03
Holt, the fictional Colorado town of his Plainsong trilogy, is based partly on Yuma, Colorado.
- 04
Netflix adapted the novel in 2017 with Jane Fonda and Robert Redford, their final film together after The Chase, Barefoot in the Park and The Electric Horseman.
