Benediction, by Kent Haruf

Returning to the High Plains country he is known for, Haruf’s latest installment of the quiet lives of the inhabitants of Holt, CO centers on the dying days of “Dad” Lewis, who owns the town’s hardware store.  He and wife, Mary, are in their eighties and have spent their married life in a house on a gravel road where they raised daughter, Lorraine, who returns to help care for Dad in his last days, and son, Frank, from whom Dad is estranged.  Frank is gay and his father has never been able to accept that, nor has Frank wanted to return to the narrow-minded small town from his not-very-successful life in California.  The new minister in town also has problems – having been dismissed from his last post and more or less exiled to Holt, he has already managed to upset his new parishioners, his wife, and his teenaged son with his outspoken political views.   The elderly next door neighbor is welcoming her granddaughter, Alice, after Alice’s mother’s death, and a mother and her adult daughter are also part of the constellation of characters and events forming around Dad as he lies dying.  Not Faulkner, and a bit too quiet and spare.  258 pp.