The setting for all of his books is Holt, Colorado, patterned after the north east Colorado town of Yuma, on the edge of the Great Plains where he lived in the early 80’s. A ““Plainsong”” is technically a body of chants used in the liturgies of the Western Church, but Haruf has explained the title as “any simple and unadorned melody or air”, most likely emanating from the Great Plains of the western United States.