“Our Souls at Night” by Kent Haruf

My expectation for “Our Souls at Night” was to be inspired to find love later in life, especially after the death of a spouse. But, sadly, I was disappointed. The book is written by the well-known author Kent Haru, who crafts small-town stories that read as slow as molasses. I can relish such a book, but in this case, it quickly became evident that he writes solely from a specific male perspective. There is no romance in the book. Instead, it is a story of tenderness, touch and companionship. It also subtly intertwines loss into the storyline in ways that make one think.

The story takes place in the small rural, fictitious town of Holt, Colorado. (Apparently, all of the author’s stories do). The elderly widow Addie Moore bravely approaches her elderly widower neighbor Louis Waters to propose they share a bed occasionally to simply talk, hug and then sleep. Addie speaks to Louis of not wanting to spend what life she has left in unbearable loneliness.

Louis immediately takes her up on the offer. They agree on a plan and he waits until dark to walk behind the houses to show up at her back door. He arrives holding a paper bag containing his toothbrush and pajamas. They talk very little and then go straight to bed and begin holding each other. And so begins an unusual relationship wherein two people seeking a common human bond of companionship fulfill a deep need for human touch.

“We’ve been by ourselves for too long. For years. I’m lonely.”

Kent Haruf
Credit: Penguin Random House

Addie and Louis’ conversations slowly unfold each night; bit by bit they share their former relationships with each other. We begin to view their past spouses as three-dimensional persons. As Addie and Louis become more familiar, they reach a point where they even share the sacred experiences of the deaths of their spouses.

Soon Addie also reveals the details of her daughter’s tragic death as a child. On a hot summer day, her son Gene was chasing his 6-year-old sister Connie in the backyard with a water hose. Addie was in the house when she heard a car screech. She ran out front to see that her daughter had been killed by the car while running from Gene. This incident deeply damaged Addie’s husband’s relationship with his son and, consequently, the relationship between Addie and her husband.

Years after the accident, Gene faces serious problems in his life (both his marriage and his business fail). The stress, combined with his small-town thinking, causes him to voice his disapproval of his mother’s relationship with Louis. He threatens to keep Addie’s grandson Jamie from her in an attempt to control her behavior. Addie needs her grandson in her life, so she reluctantly parts ways with Louis.

“He shaved and showered as he always did and in the darkness of the evening walked over past the neighbors’ houses and she was sitting on the porch waiting for him and she got up and stood on the steps and kissed him for the first time where people could see them.”

“Our Souls at Night” unexpectedly took me back to my childhood in the 60’s when I spent all my summers in a small rural town with my grandparents. It doesn’t matter which small town because all such main streets suffer the same wagging tongues and invasion of privacy that can rule or ultimately ruin one’s life. The reader witnesses how the townspeople decide the appropriateness of Addie’s and Louis’s decision to share a bed, even though both of their spouses are long dead. It becomes the driving force behind the way in which Addie and Louis’ relationship develops, slowly blossoms, becomes hindered and then…Well, I will not spoil the ending.

I confess I kept waiting for true love to emerge in this book but it does not follow such a prescribed outcome. Instead, the author’s viewpoint gives the reader insight into how some men lack romantic emotions. I confess it was unsettling for me. 

“It’s just two old people talking in the dark,” Addie said.

This story has a wonderful message about how brave Addie was in making the decision to live her life as she chose and suffer the small-town gossip. But truth be told, there is also a delicious side of small-town USA, and that is the part of the book that kept me going along with the elusive hope of true love transpiring.

“Just to make a virtue of a necessity. Let’s go downtown in the middle of broad daylight and have lunch at the Holt Cafe, and walk right down Main Street and take our time and enjoy ourselves.”

In the end, this book is about loneliness, which all of us can relate to, especially when loneliness strikes after the death of a spouse. Suddenly you have no one to talk to and touch, which is the basic human need that is the core message of this book. “Our Souls at Night” can be a good first toe in the water for someone who has experienced the loss of a spouse and has reached the point where they are ready to begin a new life.

I almost gave up on this book, but it’s a fast read so I stuck with it, probably because even though I knew at some point that true love would never enter in, the hopeless romantic in me refused to give up.

Note: “Our Souls at Night” was also made into a Netflix film with Jane Fonda and Robert Redford.