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Plainsong is a bestselling novel by Kent Haruf. Set in the fictional town of Holt, Colorado, it tells the interlocking stories of some of the inhabitants.

The title comes from a type of unadorned music sung in Christian churches, and is a reference to both the Great Plains setting and the simple style of the writing.

Maggie is the link between many of the other characters and strands of the novel. She introduces Victoria to the McPheron brothers, and has a romantic relationship with Tom.

• Tom Guthrie, a history teacher whose wife is growing more distant and disturbed.
• Ike and Bobby, Tom's young sons.
• Victoria Roubideaux, one of Tom's teenage pupils. When Victoria becomes pregnant, her alcoholic mother forces her to leave the house.
• Raymond and Harold McPheron, bachelor farmers who give Victoria a home.
• Maggie Jones, another schoolteacher at the local school.

The New York Times called it "a novel so foursquare, so delicate and lovely, that it has the power to exalt the reader" and Salon described reading the book as "like being in an expertly piloted small plane, finding yourself flying low and smooth over the suddenly wondrous world below". Plainsong won the Mountains & Plains Booksellers Award, the Maria Thomas Award in Fiction, and was a finalist for the National Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the New Yorker Book Award.

• Meet the Writers: Kent Haruf Barnes and Noble profile and interview

• The Sheltering Sky New York Times review of Plainsong, Verlyn Klinkenborg, October 3, 1999

• Book review: Plainsong Salon.com, Maria Russo, October 18, 1999