I never get tired of Kent Haruf's writing.Highly recommend!

The prodigal son returns to his hometown of Holt, Colorado to what should have been his day of reckoning. Instead he will once again create havoc in someone else life. This novel took a turn I was not expecting and the ending was not one I expected at all.Once again , Haruf with his understanding of small towns and the people who inhabit them, writes a novel that is anything but simple. Using his spare style of prose but an intimate tone by our narrator, a young man who runs the local paper that...

Last week, my great-niece posted a story (on Facebook) about a family that recently became stranded in a whiteout blizzard on I-70 in eastern Colorado. They pulled off at the closest exit, which happened to be the town where I grew up. Some volunteer firefighters invited all of the stranded vehicle passengers to a local hall where they were provided blankets, cots, home-cooked meals and cookies. The citizens of this very small town pooled their own resources to provide a sanctuary for 20+ strang...

Holt County, Colorado. A time and place where folks still look you in the eye and pretty much say what's on their mind. After falling off the face of the map for eight years, Jack Burdette, former high school football star and all-around charmer, shows up in the middle of the town square in a big red Cadillac. He's a good ol' boy, also a card carrying A#1 asshole. If he expects to be welcomed with open arms, he just may have another think coming. Kent Haruf's lean economy of words will pick you

“It was not a new car… Nevertheless it was still flashy, the kind of automobile you might expect a Denver pimp or just-made millionaire in Casper, Wyoming, would drive. There was all that red paint – the color of a raw bruise, say, or the vivid smear of a woman’s lipstick on a Saturday night – and all of it was shining, gleaming under the sun, looking as though he had spent an entire day polishing it for our benefit.” (The photo is of a 1980 Cadillac Coupe de Ville, which may not be the exact mo...

Kent Haruf created the fictional town of Holt, a town I have dearly loved to visit, and now that I have read all of his books from this place there’s a part of me that felt somewhat bereft. And then I remembered that it is easier to visit Holt than to fly across the planet to this imagined place that sits on the windswept Colorado Plains. Published in 1990, this was his first book to follow his debut, The Tie That Binds and before his Plainsong trilogy. This is how it begins: ”In the end Jack

4.5 stars rounded down.I'm having a very unique problem lately. This is the second book that I've thoroughly enjoyed that I can't really recommend to anyone for fear that they'll hate it. So, once again, take my rating and this review with a grain of salt. You'll likely fucking hate this book.Where You Once Belonged is a book that I would label a tragedy, in the vein of such depressing fair as Of Mice and Men and The Green Mile. Bad shit happens in this book, and the author doesn't care about yo...

Kent Haruf understood people. He wrote about small-town people, but really they are people like everywhere else: proud, arrogant, hurt, angry, frustrated, petty, judgmental. In Where You Once Belonged Haruf displays his perfect pitch for understated truth through behavior and simple dialogue and plot: A bully reappears in the fictional town of Holt, Colorado. Then we learn the history that preceded his disappearing. This is a quietly brutal book, and it is honest. Oh how I love Kent Haruf's writ...

(4.5)"If nothing else, Jack Burdette knows how to disappear."As the sun slowly dips beyond the horizon, Jack Burdette, with his freshly new linens on credit, opens his car door, sits down and turns the ignition; he’s on his way out of town, away from his past. He suddenly returns eight years later with a plan and no one can stop him from achieving his goal.Haruf shows us that life isn’t always fair and the bad guy doesn’t always get caught; life is open-ended and no one is safe, bereft from a na...

Kent Haruf died exactly one month after my beloved father (they were born the same year, too), and, when I found out, I cried right into my hands.I've had a literary love affair with Haruf, and this was the only book of his I hadn't read. We now have no new territory to explore together.His book, Eventide, remains my five-star favorite; I do believe it was his Great American Novel, but Where You Once Belonged was wonderful. They're all wonderful. And, even though this particular story is just so...

I made a return visit to Holt, Colorado, one of my favorite places. This felt for all the world like sitting in a bar listening to an old acquaintance catch me up on what has been happening over a few beers, in particular the story of Jack Burdette and his affect on this small town. As we say in the south, "some people just need killin". This is the second book in a couple of weeks where I would have happily crawled into the pages and done the job myself. I made the mistake of reading the last f...

Kent Haruf never disappoints.This is a plot-oriented story, so I am not going to tell you very much. A prodigal son returns home. He is not welcome. Why? You do not read to ponder deep questions, but to find out what has happened and how the story will end. The setting is the small fictional town of Holt, situated on the high plains of Colorado. Haruf writes, as always, about small town America. Events culminate in 1985; the book starts there, it backtracks to the 60s and then the 70s and ends a...

This is a story about unassuming, hardworking people, living a simple life, though there is nothing simple about their story. It is less than two hundred pages in length and contains a lifetime’s worth of tragedy and heartbreak, along with some stolen moments of happiness.By reducing his words to the bare minimum and leaving out unnecessary emotive descriptions, Haruf lets the reader determine the level of feeling for themselves simply by witnessing each character’s actions and reactions. I just...

Wow, what a read. Not at all what I expected. If you're familiar with Kent Haruf's work, Holt, CO may seem familiar to you, but for me, that's where the similarities between this and his other novels end. I'm used to being left with a cozy feeling after reading Haruf. Yes, you see lots of bad things happening and life definitely isn't all rosy but at the end, it somehow feels right. This one does not have that feeling in the ending. That said, though, I enjoyed it. Haruf is really worth reading,...

4 starsTrying to catch up on all the books that Haruf wrote. Not finding one that I haven't liked. Such a wonderful author - gone too soon. Definitely not the ending that one expects, but written by Haruf, you should know better. This story took place mainly in the 1970' s and 80's. However the town was as big a character as any one person in the story. Small Colorado town, inhabited by small town people, who were faithful to their town. We meet the farmers, the business owners, and their famili...

I feel a deep regret as I finish this book- this is the last book I will be able to read by one of the best authors ever.(I have read them all!) I love going to small town Holt and meeting its people. The language in his books is simple but eloquent. With each of his books, I am drawn in immediately and the ending always comes way too soon. In this book "Where You Once Belonged", we meet Jack Burdette, the small town football hero who returns after an 8 yr absence. He left under nefarious circum...

Former high school football star Jack Burdette returns to his hometown of Holt, Colorado, in the 1980's, after an eight-year absence. Jack has alienated the townspeople due to his past actions. His friend, Pat Arbuckle, the local newspaper editor, tells the sad story of Jack’s rise and fall.I enjoyed the first half of this book. The author writes in a clear, crisp style. He maintains dramatic tension by creating curiosity to find out what could have gone so terribly wrong in Jack’s life. It is a...

It feels like a sacrilege to rate a Haruf novel less than 4 stars, but this was my least favorite (and final) of all his works. I much preferred his later novels, particularly his ‘Plainsong’ trilogy. I didn’t really bond with anyone in this story until the very end when narrator and Holt newspaperman Pat Arbuckle starts living in the present instead of documenting the past. Another problem for me was the town of Holt itself - Holt, Colorado, in this early book, is not the vibrant Holt of Haruf’...