Kent Haruf's novels relay the struggles of high-plains farmers and teachers, children and parents, husbands and wives, whose lives proceed along differing trajectories. Like William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County or Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, Haruf's fictional Holt, Colorado, is a place where momentary kindnesses and abiding despair intersect in the lives of small-town people. Collectively, the stories of these people create a history that all the inhabitants of Holt share as they seek emotional connections to sustain them through long winters and years of hard work in this isolated region of northeast Colorado. In a profile published in the Omaha World Herald (19 December 1999), Haruf revealed that he has created a map of Holt in his mind and carefully located the homes, businesses, and even the water towers that mark the landscape of his fictional town. Holt is based in part on the real Colorado towns of Yuma, Wray, and...