The Tie That Binds by Kent Haruf (2000-03-01)

After reading this book, one looks at the often thin and temporary relationships of family today in a different light. This book creates characters that are real, human, and honorable; yet, you wonder if you admire or pity them

Kent Haruf clearly knows his hardscrabble, fictional Holt, CO and the people who choose or are forced through circumstance to live there. He understands that a family is connected in many ways other than just by blood, but that even the deepest connections are both buoyed and buffeted by internal and external events. His novel "Plainsong" told a deep and heartfelt story of lonely, hardworking people who were placed in an awkward and difficult situation and (mostly) made the best of it by reaching outside themselves and caring for each other even when it would have been easier to give up. His characters felt genuine, multi-layered and compelling. It was a great book.

"The Tie That Binds" is not that book. Although it too takes place in and around Holt, CO, these characters are so one-dimensional as to be almost unbelievable. The story begins and ends in an unlikely and awkward manner, with a Denver newspaperman chasing a lead about the hospitalized, elderly Edith Goodnough and the death of her brother Lyman. The bulk of the story, then, is actually told in flashback by an angry and cynical neighbor who seems to know and care more about the Goodnough family than his own. The ugliness and cruelty that transpires between and among all characters strains credulity at times. And what finally does occur between Edith and Lyman seems needlessly melodramatic. Certainly, even for these sad folks, there had to be other, simpler and less painful ways to resolve things.

Ultimately, this is a hit-you-with-a-sledgehammer book, with little nuance or subtlety. Just like the name Goodnough (yes, we get it, no one is ever good enough) the author relentlessly slams home his message in an unnecessarily heavy-handed way. Readers might want to skip this book and go back and reread "Plainsong" instead.

"Blest be the tie that binds
Our hearts in Christian love
The fellowship of kindred minds
Is like to that above."

But Roy Goodnough has apparently never sung that old hymn. Roy, who brought his wife up from Iowa to make a go of it in the High Plains of Colorado, is "a hard stick". After his wife passes, it doesn't take that long for his adult children, Edith and Lyman, to grow sick and tired of life under his heel. Finally, the man-child Lyman finds a way to break out, disappearing from the family farm for twenty years while Edith, duty-bound, stays and cares for their slightly-less-than invalid, embittered, and vicious, father. Time passes and the life slowly drains out of Edith, until finally, nine years after the old man is in the ground, Lyman returns home, and the world takes on a different cast. Edith and Lyman, now both in their 60s, experience for the first time the vistas, wonders, and wide open spaces that are the plains and mountains of Colorado. Until Lyman begins to lose his mind and Edith is faced with the prospect of caring for yet another decrepit, violent family member. What to do?

Kent Haruf has fashioned an authentic telling of the hard realities of life in the high plains. His characters are so richly drawn, you feel as though you could walk up and shake one's hand. Deceptively slow-paced, (that is, not slow at all) "The Tie That Binds" is a novel of country folk, and country tensions, and the sea-change that marks the life of a woman, bullied into decades of self-abnegation, who finally finds the will to say 'yes' to herself.

The first book I read from Kent Haruf was Plainsong, which I thought was one of the best books of the year. The Tie That Binds, however, may be even better. It's bleak simplicity, as stark as the Colorado plains in which it takes place, assaults the reader slowly and steadily, unrelenting, but sublime and oh so human. The story of Sanders Roscoe and his neighbors Edith and Lyman Goodnough is heartbreaking and inevitable. Told by Roscoe in a voice as authentic as any I've ever heard, the tale unwinds slowly and passionately. I can imagine sitting in Roscoe's house listening to him tell his side of the story with the rapt attention he demands and deserves. Like Plainsong, the book is full of characters who, with the exception of Edith's father, straddle the line between heroism and villanry. No one is without blame or imperfections, regardless of their intentions. Haruf obviously understands life in Holt, Colorado, and does a wonderful job of conveying it to the reader. Likewise, he knows people and the characters in this book jump off the pages with honesty and realness. An excellent book and another reason to delve deeper into the Haruf portfolio of fine books.

Haruf's first novel asks the reader to think about responsibility, family, place, community: what they mean, what we value. Fifty-year-old Sanders Roscoe sits himself down to tell us the story of Edith Goodnough and Sanders Roscoe, of the Roscoe family and Goodnough family, of the High Plains town of Holt, Colorado, from the late 19th Century to the 1970s. He shows us a woman who simply does what needs doing, no matter how staggering the burdens may appear to us [including the twice-daily milking of cows that, after reading Roscoe's heated description, the reader will forever understand as not even remotely romantic or amusing]. With wry humor, no shortage of anger, a good deal of plain speaking, and a pace that allows for digressions, imagings, and timely withholdings and revealings, Roscoe looks at the stuff of Edith's stay-at-home life and challenges us to see her as anything other than heroic.

Something unusual happened when I was about half way through `The Ties That Bind'...I misplaced my copy of the book. A couple of months later, when I found it again and resumed reading it, I was amazed to find that it was as though I'd never been away from Haruf's wonderful creation.
Like many people, I had read Haruf's most recent work, `Plainsong', been utterly captivated and immediately ordered his previous novels. While `The Ties That Bind' does not have the same depth of skill as `Plainsong' the gap between the two novels is slight. Haruf's tale of Sanders Roscoe and his neighbor Edith Goodnough and her demanding family is spare and haunting. Haruf's characters are so real, so genuine and alive that the reader can't help but develop an empathy for them that is rare in fiction today. Although lacking the depth and finesse of `Plainsong', `The Ties That Bind' is a wonderful first novel.

Set in the plains of Colorado from the early 1900s to 1977, Kent Haruf's The Tie that Binds is a beautiful story of real life, real people, and real meaning imparted by genuine relationships. Sanders Roscoe drives a Denver newspaper reporter away from his door in fury, but he welcomes the reader into his home where he tells an enthralling story of life on the American Plains--in particular, he tells of a woman called Edith who lies in hospital bed, charged unexpectedly with murder.

Sandy's father knew Edith's family when they first arrived in the plains. His Indian grandmother helped deliver Edith when she was born, and there's a wonderful sense of history to the depiction of Indian lands brought under the plough and tamed. Edith's father despises the half-caste neighbor boy, but years of working the same tracts of land tie families and lives together, even while a sense of duty threatens those precious ties.

Daughter of a cruelly unthinking man, sister of an oddly unthinking brother, and childless neighbor who loves children, Edith is dry and sandy as the soil, unyielding as the plough, and solidly determined as the trees that break the ever-blowing wind. Heroes are wounded people rising above their losses, forgiving each other, trusting, and building ties as land and nature bind them. As Sanders tells Edith's tale it soon becomes clear both he and she, for all their imperfections, are heroes of a kind.

Wonderfully evocative, unflinchingly honest, with self-deprecating humor and truly redeeming affection, The Tie that Binds binds the reader to these characters and the land, leaving a feeling that we've really been there, known these people, and really care what might happen in the end.

Disclosure: A generous friend loaned me this book.

Fifteen years before he wrote his masterpiece Plainsong, Kent Haruf produced this gem. The Tie That Binds will surely find readers as a result of Plainsong, a fine story about brothers and loneliness and tenacity in the High Plains community of Holt, Colorado. Haruf's first novel also features the relationship between siblings, the dutiful Edith Goodnough and her simple brother Lyman, both children of failed homesteaders condemned to a hard life on a dryland farm south of Holt. She is, in the words of the narrator, Sanders Roscoe, her admiring neighbor from the adjacent ranch, a person who "continued to endure by plain courage and a clear eye to duty." In her 80 years, Edith has known 4 men well - her own flawed father and his feckless son Lyman - and another father and son, John and Sanders Roscoe, who are the only persons in the world who truly understand her courage, incredible sense of duty, and beauty. But, as Sanders says "understanding it doesn't mean liking it". Edith's story is haunting yet inspirational. Sanders wonderful narration is filled with the stoic truths of the Great Plains: "Life ain't fair" and "If you can't understand it, you just have to accept it" and "It wasn't anybody's fault. It happened; that's all." The tenor of The Tie That Binds is reminiscent of a two very different classics of the Plains: Larry McMurtry's "Last Picture Show" and Ole Rolvaag's "Giants in the Earth." Having grown up on the Eastern Colorado plains, I swear I know many of the characters. They are as genuine as the real article and every bit as tragic. Five stars without reservation.

Oh, my. Haruf has found the common fiber of small town tales. "Never married, lived with her brother" - like my grandAunt, Nellie, Miss Inez, who was a delight in my own town - these women are the stuff of the two most powerful news sources, rumor and speculation.
Edith Goodnough is described lovingly; perhaps Haruf had an auntie, also? I was thrown that this was his first novel. I thought that "Where You Once Belonged" read more like "first-time out." Haruf knows his characters well, though, and I prefer to believe that he loved his "auntie", and was as terrified by his small-town hero as was I.
"The Tie That Binds" is a wonderful comfort to those of us raised in and prefering small communities, and it is an accurate and honest presentation to those who do not or cannot choose this type of life.

This is a remarkable book because it so unremarkable. Very traditional first person narrator, nice but not exciting characters, minimalist blot, wonderful setting, and yet the tone and language of the story flows. It creates and pulls in memories and emotions. Haruf is high on my list of read again authors. He brings me joy. Is there a better reason to read good fiction? Not for me.

What a great, great book!! This was the author's
first book. It was written in 1984. It tells the story
of ~~ 3 generations of two separate farm families,
who only live 1/2 mile from on another. And how,
over those many, many years; their separate lives
have become thoroughly entwined. The cast of
characters was richly developed and you really
got to know them. I, highly, recommend this book.

Ken Haruf tells the deeply moving story of the Goodnoughs through the voice of their neighbor, Sanders Roscoe. It is a hauntingly beautiful tale of family pain and resilience, especially of one woman, Edith Goodnough.

My grandparents homesteaded on the eastern plains of Colorado - both sets of them. I knew my grandmothers' lives were tough - they each had 8 children to raise and all the work and deprivation of being poor but managing to get by until the Dust Bowl drove them off the land. This story really brought it all to light in a way I'd never thought of before.

This book is one I enjoyed reading but not enough to seek out other books by the author although I'm apt to read more at some time. However, when I was lent a copy to read, I was several pages in before I realized I already had read it - something very unusual for me.
However, the book is an interesting read on how a person (in this case the father) can be controlling using a combination of sense of duty and fear to ensure control. It illustrates the two major ways of adjusting to the control - flight by the son and obedience by the daughter. It builds to an interesting climax where the daughter (now 80) acts for herself. All in all the novel has reasonable plot and character development - definately worth reading but ...

The Tie that Binds is my favorite kind of writing-a good story, well-told, with strongly developed characters. As the characters unfold, the reader understands their motivations even when disagreeing with their actions. Individuals are a product of their times as well as of the particular environment in which they grow up. Haruf understands this, making his characters true to all that surrounds them, right to the end of the book.

After reading PLAINSONG, which I could not put down--I stayed up until 4AM to finish it--I was relieved to find two more novels by this writer. The TIE THAT BINDS has so much truth I called people on the phone to read them passages. These characters are completely real to me now, so much so that it feels strange to remember that I met them in a novel.

Haruf creates small-town characters who are extraordinary in their ordinary lives. We want to know them, but they are usually two dimensional, and often only one dimensional, rarely three dimensional. Still, it's a small world we enjoy getting to know.

Haruf has a way with words, mostly because he doesn't waste them. Every sentence is so well crafted that you don't realize that someone actually wrote it--it just "is." Rarely have I found an author's voice so perfectly matched to his material. Highly recommended.

This book brought me to a world completely unfamiliar to me and yet so believable. It was a bleak story that made me care about and admire the characters who are somehow able to retain their goodness despite the hardness of their lives. You wish at the end of the novel you could have actually met Edith and Sanders.

Set typically for Haruf on the High Plains of Colorado, this is his first novel. It tells the sad story of mean-spirited Sanders Roscoe, his son Lyman, and his daughter Edith. Poor Edith--she is the one who bears the brunt, for her entire life, of the cruelty of this very disfunctional clan. But Edith never really tries to help herself, and consequently loses some of our sympathy. Stylistically, the book is excellent, but the characters are just so nasty that for me, I lost interest in them.

Very fine novel. Not his best (Plainsong, hands down) but compelling.
Did make me feel that I live a very slothful, cushy, and easy life, though. Made me want to scrub the kitchen floor at the very least.
I was sorry to let the characters go when the book ended!