There are a few facts that astound me about this novel. The first, is that this was Kent Haruf’s debut novel. The second, is that although it was “critically acclaimed”, apparently it was not a large commercial success.On the first point, this novel does not read like any debut novel I have read. Granted, many debuts are smashingly good. However, Kent Haruf doesn’t “do” smashing. He does subtle. And clear. And he makes each word count. Each sentence matters and when threaded together, they give

****4.5 Stars****I’m saddened that this gifted writer is now gone. No one (to my knowledge) has written such eloquent and truthful tributes to the people who live and work out on the high plains of eastern Colorado where I grew up. This novel setting is Holt, Colorado, an imaginary farm town very near where my own family homesteaded.At times the story is heart wrenching and evocative. The author’s rich details of rural farm life and the connection with neighbors were spot-on and elegantly portra...

The Tie That Binds is my third novel by Kent Haruf and this is a beautifully written and deeply affecting story. Hypnotic in his storytelling, heartbreaking and a real page turner.This was Kent Haruf’s debut novel and what an engaging and haunting first novel it is, Set in the plains of Eastern Colorado in the early to mid 20th century The Tie that binds tells the story of an 80 year old Edith Goodnough, a woman from the American High plains who is charged with murder. Her neighbour Sanders Rosc...

This is a sad novel for me for two reasons. The first is that the story of Edith Goodnough's life on a farm outside Holt, Colorado was filled with sadness, sacrifice, and very little joy, except what little pleasures she could find here and there. I was rooting for her to walk away from her enraged, nasty father every time he opened his mouth, to marry when she had the chance, to escape, one way or another. Her dignity and determination to carry her responsibilities as far as she could manage st...

This is an incredibly mature work to be Haruf’s first novel, and a reminder of the author’s rare sensitivity to portray endurance, compassion and the silent but overpowering presence of the dry, plain lands of Colorado.Revisiting Holt was a moving experience for this humbled reader. Even if the characters of the Plainsong trilogy were absent I sensed their resilient, humble spirit in Edith Goodnough, the protagonist of this quiet but intense story.The plot is almost non-existent. After Edith’s m...

A worthy finish to my reading adventures with Haruf's six novels about rural life in Colorado. Here we get a vision of the tragic life of Edith as the daughter of a selfish, stubborn, and mean spirited farmer in the high and dry plains of eastern Colorado. It is told from the perspective of Roscoe, a neighbor friend who also grew up in this hardscrabble life of farming and whose father once loved the warm and tough Edith. But a terrible accident makes Edith's father forever dependent on her help...

I loved this. It was Kent Haruf's very first novel, and I think his best. Oh why did he have to die?! He died on November 30, 2014 at the age of seventy-one."Colorado, January 1977. Eighty-year-old Edith Goodnough lies in a hospital bed, IV taped to the back of her hand, police officer at her door. She is charged with murder. The clues: a sack of chicken feed slit with a knife, a milky-eyed dog tied outdoors one cold afternoon." Really, you don't need to know anything else. These four sentences

The ties of family are bound by blood.  Responsibility, taking up the slack, doing what is necessary to keep things going regardless of the toll it exacts.  It all comes through here in Holt, Colorado.  This type of richness achieved with such simplicity was Haruf's own special talent.

Kent Haruf is high on my list of favorite authors and 'The Tie That Binds' is the fourth of his novels that I have read. Each time I lose myself in one of Mr. Haruf's novels, I struggle to express just what it is about his novels that never fails to so deeply move me. The novels, which take place in fictional Holt on the eastern plains of Colorado, demonstrate the bleakness of that barren land. Yet somehow, through Mr. Haruf's spare and poetic language, I can still see the beauty HE finds in tha...

4.5 stars, rounded down.Kent Haruf wrote quiet novels. Nothing spectacular happens to his characters, but life happens to them, just as it does to us all, and it happens to them with so much reality that it is both shocking and recognizable. The title of his first novel, The Tie That Binds, evokes images of love and loyalty and family bonding, but what he delivers is a reminder that bindings are restraints and homes can be prisons. Edith Goodnough finds herself bound to a family and a hard farm

He can sure write old folks. And younger folks, and flinty ones that don’t do so good, weak ones that wish they could, bitter ones that are helpless to be anything else. This is just the way it is. Here is life. He illuminates grace in hidden corners.

In "The Tie That Binds," Edith Goodnough is bound for a life of sacrifice by family ties and a sense of duty. She and her brother never had a childhood on their Colorado farm after her mother died young. Her father, disabled after a horrific accident, emotionally abused his children and regarded them as no more than laborers. Edith was resilient, taking care of the two men and working on the farm for her whole life. She gave up the man who loved her for a life of sacrifice and obligation.Edith's...

The "tie that binds" has connotations that are positive. Family. Love. Support. Loyalty. Acceptance. Rest. It speaks to me of life-affirming bonds that bring gladness of heart and sustenance through good and bad times. These were the expectations I entertained from the book title, and I could not be more sorely mistaken. Alas, “blest be the ties that bind” is not always true.In this novel set in Holt, Colorado, Kent Haruf offers an additional dimension that is unsettling. The tie that binds is o...

If it is possible to write a gloriously entertaining story about the agony of being stuck, including horrible physical violence, Haruf did it. It starts as a funny tall tale, and keeps that flavor and structure, but oh how real it becomes!Mr. Haruf, wherever you are in the afterlife ether, I hope you can see me giving you a standing ovation and hear me cheering my damned head off.

Will have to think on this....review to come. I was introduced to Haruf by my husband and starting with his later books, he instantly became one of my favorites of all times. So I had to go back to where it all started. This story was much more somber and dark than some of his later books. He still details the hard life of his characters but with the Goodnough family I found no joy. In other works of his, no matter how trying the lives are there is always a sense of promise for something better

Many famous writers dance around you when you crack the cover of a Kent Haruf novel, but I don't mean to suggest that he's not his own man, his own writer. It's just obvious that he has a high literary aptitude coupled with a unique talent to tell a story, and tell it well. I have, in an earlier review, compared his style to that of John Steinbeck and Carson McCullers, respectively. But, here in his debut novel, I also felt the force of other great influences: Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, and Wa...

The Tie that binds -Kent Haruf. In 1999 I read Kent Haruf’s Plainsong and he became a favorite author of mine. It was a wonderful story about two elder bachelor rancher brothers taking in a pregnant teen that needed a place to live. It was set in factious Holt, Colorado. Faulkner was one of Haruf’s favorite writers and influenced his creation of Holt. Holt was the home of the 5 of the 6 books I’ve read. He wrote 6 before his death in 2014. They all have a sense of place and deep connection to th...

...because when you know people all your life you try to understand how it is for them. What you can't understand you just accept.3.5 stars. I love the Plainsong series, and whenever I want to read something that will settle me down and take me to a less rushed time and place I reach for one of Kent Haruf's books. The Tie That Binds did just that, but I have to admit that I preferred the aforementioned series, probably because it has a wider cast for him to introduce us to. That said I adore his...