Eventide Reading Guide & Discussion Questions

Book Club Discussion Questions

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For supplemental discussion material see our Beyond the Book article, and our BookBrowse Review of Eventide.

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

The introduction, discussion questions, and suggestions for further reading that follow are designed to enliven your group’s discussion of Eventide, Kent Haruf’s moving follow-up to his acclaimed novel Plainsong.


About This Book

Set in the cattle country of the high plains, in and just outside of Holt, Colorado, Eventide tells the story of the McPheron brothers, Harold and Raymond, two elderly bachelor-ranchers, and the rich cast of characters who surround them.

In many ways, Eventide is about the pain of separation. As the novel opens, Victoria Roubideaux is preparing to move away from the McPherons’ ranch to attend college in Fort Collins. Harold and Raymond had taken her in back when she was three months pregnant and turned out of her home. Victoria and her daughter, Katie, now more than a year old, have come to occupy a central place in the McPherons’ lives. Running parallel to this narrative are several other stories of loss and separation. Betty and Luther Wallace, poor and ill-equipped to raise their children, face losing them to foster care. Mary Wells is raising her two young girls alone, while her husband works in Alaska. DJ Kephart has lost his mother and has never known his father. And all of these characters face even greater losses to come. How they respond to those–losses with sadness, outrage, bitter anguish, or hard-won stoicism–reveals the full depth and range of human emotion. But Eventide tells of connection as well as separation, of community as well as loneliness, of compassion as well as cruelty. Of all the characters, Raymond McPheron may suffer the most devastating loss, but his spirit of self-effacing generosity survives, and he meets someone who offers him a happiness he has never before experienced.

In writing that is as moving as any in contemporary fiction today, Kent Haruf offers an unforgettable portrait not only of the small town of Holt, Colorado, and the fascinating people who live there but of the human condition itself, in all its brilliance and frailty.

Reading Guide

1. Two elderly bachelors living on an isolated ranch in eastern Colorado–not what one would immediately consider an exciting premise for a work of fiction. How does Kent Haruf transform the mundane materials of his characters and setting into such an emotionally compelling story?


2. In what ways does Eventide deepen readers’ relationships with those characters who also inhabit Haruf’s previous novel Plainsong? How are the two novels alike? In what ways are they significantly different?


3. What kind of men are Harold and Raymond McPheron? What are their most distinctive and appealing characteristics? What makes them so likable?

Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Vintage. Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.