Colorado January Eighty-year-old Edith Goodnough lies in a hospital bed IV taped to the back of her hand police officer at her door She is charged with murder The clues a sack of chicken feed slit with a knife a milky-eyed dog tied outdoors one cold afternoon The motives the brutal business of farming and a family code of ethics as unforgiving as the winter prairie itselfIn his critically acclaimed first novel Kent Haruf delivers the sweeping tale of a woman of the American High Plains as told by her neighbor Sanders Roscoe As Roscoe shares what he knows Ediths tragedies unfold a childhood of pre-dawn chores a mothers death a violence that leaves a father dependent on his children forever enraged Here is the story of a woman who sacrifices her happiness in the name of family--and then in one gesture reclaims her freedom Breathtaking determinedly truthful The Tie That Binds is a powerfully eloquent tribute to the arduous demands of rural America and of the tenacity of the human spirit.
