The Last Novel

In Feb­ru­ary, 2014, the doc­tors told Kent Haruf, the author of the best­selling Plain­song series, that he had inter­sti­tial lung can­cer. They said it was incur­able and he would die soon. It hit him hard, as you’d expect, and for a while, he couldn’t find his way for­ward, but by April, he was tired of wait­ing around to die. He need­ed some­thing to do. He’d been a writer all his life, so he tried to write. He strug­gled with a few short sto­ries, but they didn’t seem to come togeth­er. Then it hit him. He told his wife, Cathy, “I’m going to write our sto­ry.” Some­how in the short time he had left, under the dark shad­ow of the grim reaper’s scythe, he man­aged to write a mas­ter­piece, his last novel.

Our Souls at Night is a love sto­ry. Addie and Louis are in their sev­en­ties. Both have been recent­ly wid­owed. They bare­ly know each oth­er, but one day out of the blue, Addie comes knock­ing at Louis’s door and makes a propo­si­tion. She asks him to come to her house at bed time to sleep with her. This isn’t about sex, she explains. She wants him to lie beside her in bed and talk with her before they go to sleep. That’s it. Noth­ing more.

Louis is star­tled. He finds her pro­pos­al bold and strange, but after he thinks about it, he real­izes he’s lone­ly and hasn’t got much else to do any­way, so he fig­ures, “What the hell?”

That night, he packs a lit­tle bag with his paja­mas, tooth­brush, and shav­ing kit. He walks down the street to her house after dark and returns home ear­ly the next morn­ing so the neigh­bors won’t notice and be scan­dal­ized. He returns the next night. And the next. While Addie and Louis lay side by side in their bed clothes night after night, they tell each oth­er about their lives, the good times and the bad, and a beau­ti­ful love sto­ry, mag­i­cal and won­drous, spins out from there.

Our Souls at Night was inspired by Haruf’s rela­tion­ship with his wife, Cathy. They knew each oth­er in high school, but they’d nev­er dat­ed. After high school, they went in dif­fer­ent direc­tions, and their lives marched on apart from one anoth­er. They got mar­ried; they raised kids; and their mar­riages end­ed in divorce. Not hav­ing thought about one anoth­er for decades, they attend­ed their thir­ti­eth high school class reunion. They struck up a con­ver­sa­tion and dis­cov­ered they had reached sim­i­lar places in their lives. In the months that fol­lowed, they fell in love and got mar­ried, a “late-life gift,” Haruf called it.

He start­ed to write their love sto­ry on May 1, 2014. He retired each morn­ing to the pre­fab­ri­cat­ed shed behind his house where he always did his writ­ing, only this time he was teth­ered to an oxy­gen tank. Through­out his career and in this case, he used what has to be the most unusu­al writ­ing method ever employed. He put on a wool stock­ing cap, pulled it down over his eyes, and tapped out his first drafts blind on an old Roy­al upright type­writer. He did this to shut out the real world so he could dream his way into the land­scape and com­mu­ni­ty of Holt, Col­orado, the fic­tion­al high-plains small town where his sto­ries take place. After he com­plet­ed a chap­ter typ­ing blind, he took off the cap, reviewed the raw text with all its typos and mis­takes, made notes of changes in the mar­gins, and then typed a clean revision.

On aver­age, it had tak­en him six years to write one of his pre­vi­ous nov­els, but this time his dead­line was clos­ing fast and unfor­giv­ing, so in writ­ing this last nov­el, he set a goal of fin­ish­ing a chap­ter a day. And mirac­u­lous­ly, he did it. In forty-five days he wrote forty-five chap­ters, and then began to revise and pol­ish them.

In mid-August when Cathy began tran­scrib­ing his drafts onto her com­put­er, she must have sensed that this nov­el was some­thing spe­cial. “Don’t you dare die before you fin­ish it,” she told him.

In Sep­tem­ber, Haruf sent a com­plete man­u­script to his edi­tor, Gary Fisketjon, with a cov­er note: “Dear Gary, Here’s a lit­tle sur­prise. Love, Kent.” Giv­en Haruf’s con­di­tion, Fisketjon was indeed great­ly surprised.

He pushed every­thing else on his desk aside because he knew there couldn’t be much time left for the back-and-forth of edit­ing. Fisketjon and Haruf worked hard on it for the next sev­er­al weeks. In mid-Novem­ber, Haruf’s strength waned. He told Cathy she would have to do the final copyedit.

Like Addie and Louis, Cathy and Kent liked to end the day talk­ing to each oth­er in bed. The night of Novem­ber 29, they went to bed and talked into the night. In the morn­ing, he was gone.

Cathy fin­ished the copy­ed­it two days later.

Our Souls at Night was pub­lished in May, 2015. I spent most of 2013 and 2014 writ­ing Old Wounds to the Heart. I want­ed to write a love sto­ry about peo­ple in their sev­en­ties and eight­ies.  Before I start­ed writ­ing, I searched for sim­i­lar sto­ries. I found noth­ing inspir­ing, and it both­ered me. The unstat­ed assump­tion seemed to be that the elder­ly aren’t capa­ble of, or for rea­sons of pro­pri­ety shouldn’t indulge in, love and pas­sion. I didn’t like that, so I set out to write a sto­ry about old peo­ple who are vital and alive in every way.

Old Wounds to the Heart is about a love tri­an­gle among peo­ple in their late sev­en­ties. When the sto­ry opens, two of them are sui­ci­dal and the oth­er is iso­lat­ed and depressed. An ancient secret of betray­al comes out and their lives clash togeth­er in a storm of emo­tions – rage, jeal­ousy, hate, love, lust, pas­sion, and hope. One day they’re stand­ing around, wait­ing to die. The next, they’re wag­ing a pitched bat­tle for every breath of life left in them.

I pub­lished Old Wounds to the Heart in July, 2015. I found Our Souls at Night a month lat­er. The Fates were kind to me in the tim­ing. I’m not sure I would have writ­ten my sto­ry if I’d seen Haruf’s last nov­el before­hand. It says so much of what I want­ed to say, but with so much more grace and elegance.

Although writ­ten by a writer on death’s doorstep, Our Souls at Night is a cel­e­bra­tion of life, and the sto­ry behind its cre­ation mir­rors its theme. Faced with the cer­tain­ty of a swift­ly approach­ing death, Haruf did what he loved to do to the very end, ced­ing every inch of ground to mor­tal­i­ty only grudg­ing­ly and on his own terms. What a way to go out, and what a great gift to leave behind.