Our Souls at Night

Our Souls at Night is the last novel by the American writer Kent Haruf, published after his death in 2015.

The book is set in a small town on the High Plains of Colorado, and its two central characters are Addie Moore and Louis Waters, both widowed and both living by themselves in houses they have been in for years. Addie proposes an arrangement: that Louis come to her house at night so that they can talk and sleep beside each other, without any of the expectations that a small town would attach to it. What begins as company becomes something more, and the novel follows the two of them as they tell each other about the marriages they had and the things they did, while the town and their adult children form their own opinions about what the two of them are doing. Haruf wrote the book in the last year of his life, working on it until he died.

It is written in a plain, unhurried style, with the two of them talking rather than doing, and it is the last of his novels.