It’s difficult to convey this area of Colorado to people who have never experienced it. One of my very best friends lives on the Plains, just a short distance away from the town today. Less than 35 miles away, we made frequent trips for groceries or other necessities. Yuma just happened to be the nearest town to our final home in Eastern Colorado before venturing back to Texas in 2013. Our Souls at Night is set in fictional Holt, Colorado, a town based loosely on Yuma, Colorado. Multiple towns are linked together, despite the vast distance and lack of civilization between, to create one of the dearest places to my heart. Places where in a hundred mile (or more) radius, a community of people has been built. When I was first married, I lived in three small, forgotten towns in Eastern Colorado. In fact, there’s entirely another side to the state – the wide open plains similar to the look of Kansas. Few people know Colorado isn’t just a state of beautiful mountains and valleys. Little did I know when I added this book to my list, I would be reading about a fictional town based upon a place very near to where I once lived. Three years later, I’ve finished this short and sweet book in one day, thanks to my Beat the Backlist Challenge giving me the push I needed. All I know is that the trust I had in being able to write every day was helpful.Our Souls at Night was the first book I put on my “to be read list” upon signing up for my first Goodreads Reading Challenge in 2016. Call it a muse or spiritual guidance, I don’t know. I don’t want to get too fancy about it, but it was like something else was working to help me get this done. So I essentially wrote a new short chapter of the book every day. So as it happened, I went out every day trusting myself to be able to add to the story each day. This time I knew generally where the story was going, but I didn’t know very many of the details. Typically, I have always had a story pretty well plotted out before I start writing. Now that I know I have, you know-a limited time-it was important to me to try to make good use of that time. In his final interview, conducted a few days before his death, Haruf discussed Our Souls at Night: “The idea for the book has been floating around in my mind for quite a while. And not all dried up in body and spirit” (147). That it turns out we’re not finished with changes and excitements. At the end of that conversation, Addie says, “Who would have thought at this time in our lives that we’d still have something like this. Why do you think Haruf slipped this into the story?ħ. Addie and Louis discuss the fact that it’s set in Holt, the fictional town in which they live. On page 145, Addie mentions the Denver Center for the Performing Arts production of Benediction, based on the author’s own novel. When Louis confesses that he wanted to be a poet, what effect does it have on Addie’s opinion of him? And on your opinion?Ħ. Even at our ages.” Why does he feel freer with Addie than he does alone? How does his behavior become more uninhibited as the novel progresses?ĥ. On page 52, Louis describes his relationship with Addie to his daughter, “It’s some kind of decision to be free. How does the modest action in Our Souls at Night open onto larger insights about getting older?Ĥ. Kent Haruf was known for using simple, spare language to create stories of great depth. The novel begins with the word “and”: “And then there was the day when Addie Moore made a call on Louis Waters.” What do you imagine came before it?ģ.
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