"Our Souls at Night," the last book by late Colorado writer Kent Haruf, is the August selection of The Salt Lake Tribune's Utah Lit book club.
The quiet, spare novel tells the story of a widow, Addie Moore, and widower Louis Waters, neighbors who come to flout convention in their small Colorado town.
Haruf, who died in November at age 71, is also the author of "Plainsong," "Eventide" and "Benediction," a trilogy of novels set in the same fictional small town of Holt. He was a high-school English teacher when he published his first novel in 1984 at 41.
The writer didn't tell his editor he was working on a last novel, even as he was dying of lung disease. It's a fictional story, but the writer nodded to his children and acknowledged that Addie is based on his second wife, Cathy, who had been a close friend during high school in Cañon City, Colo. They rekindled their friendship in 1991 at their 30-year high-school reunion and married in 1995.
"Our Souls at Night" was inspired by the couple's love story, based on their favorite time of day, talking together in bed at night, his wife has said in press interviews. "We would lie there and hold hands and talk. There wasn't anything we never discussed."
The live Utah Lit conversation will take place at 12:15 p.m. Tuesday at sltrib.com. Join the conversation by emailing ellenf@sltrib.com or jnpearce@sltrib.com. Comment live by texting 801-609-8059 or sending a tweet to #TribTalk.
Ellen Fagg Weist
