Guthrie checks on his wife Ella, who lies unresponsive in a darkened bedroom, withdrawing from her family.

Victoria's mother discovers the pregnancy, locks Victoria out of the house, and leaves her with nowhere to go.

Victoria wanders to Maggie Jones's door late at night and asks for help.

Victoria takes a pregnancy test at Maggie's urging, confirming what she already suspects.

Russell Beckman disrupts class and Guthrie grabs the student's arm; Russell punches Guthrie in the face.

Maggie drives to the McPheron farm and asks the two brothers to take Victoria into their home.

Ella tells Guthrie she is moving to her sister's house in Denver and they divide money and arrange care for the boys.

Maggie drives Victoria to the McPheron farm, and Victoria moves into the brothers' old parents' bedroom.

Guthrie spends the night with Judy the school secretary, and Maggie confronts him about it the next day.

Victoria gets into Dwayne's car and moves with him to his apartment in Denver.

The Beckman family appears before the school board and attempts to have Guthrie removed from his teaching position.

Victoria calls Maggie from Denver asking to return, takes money from Dwayne's wallet, and boards a bus back to Holt.

Russell and his friends kidnap Ike and Bobby after the cinema, strip them, and abandon them miles outside of town.

Victoria gives birth to a baby girl and Raymond McPheron holds the newborn in his arms.

All the main characters gather at Maggie's house for a shared meal, forming an unlikely community around Victoria's baby.

Plainsong follows several isolated people in the small town of Holt, Colorado, whose lives gradually become entangled through need and compassion. Teacher Tom Guthrie struggles to hold his family together as his wife Ella withdraws into depression, while seventeen-year-old Victoria Roubideaux is cast out by her mother after her pregnancy is discovered. Maggie Jones, a fellow teacher, becomes the connective tissue of the story, brokering a plan for Victoria to live with two reclusive bachelor brothers on a farm outside town. As Guthrie and Victoria both stumble through damaging choices, they are slowly pulled back toward the people who can actually help them. By the novel's end, birth, loss, and hard-won honesty have forged an unlikely community from a group of people who each began the story entirely alone.

The headline events that shape the lives of Holt's community.

Ike and Bobby complete their morning newspaper route and visit their mother in her dark, silent bedroom before school.

Guthrie and Maggie Jones talk in the school staff lounge, where she notices he does not look well.

Victoria buys popcorn at a gas station for lunch and begins her shift washing pots at the Holt Café.

Ike and Bobby saddle the family horses, Elko and Easter, and ride west along the train tracks.

Ike and Bobby make their Saturday newspaper collections and tell Mrs. Stearns that their mother has moved out.

Ike and Bobby sneak out at midnight and spy through a broken window as Russell pressures Sharlene into sex.

Guthrie brings his sons to the McPheron farm, where all five work together to vaccinate a herd of cattle.

Victoria attends her first prenatal doctor's appointment and asks tearfully whether her baby is healthy.

Ike and Bobby visit Ella at her small rented house and use their own money to buy her coffee and a bottle of perfume.

Ella drops Ike and Bobby at Guthrie's house the morning after her farewell supper and drives away to Denver.

Maggie confronts Harold McPheron at the store, telling him that he and his brother need to talk more to Victoria.

Harold talks to Victoria about cattle market prices at the dinner table and the three of them talk late into the evening.

Ike and Bobby visit their mother in Denver for the holidays, but the trip is disappointing as she withdraws into silence again.

Raymond and Harold take Victoria to a department store and insist on buying the most expensive crib available.

Ike and Bobby find Mrs. Stearns dead in her chair, then saddle Easter and ride eleven miles to the McPheron farm.

Beneath the novel's major turning points lies a rich layer of smaller scenes that establish who these characters truly are. Ike and Bobby navigate a town full of adults who cannot protect them, finding unexpected warmth in the company of an elderly neighbor while delivering newspapers each morning. Victoria discovers the practical realities of her pregnancy through a doctor's visit, a lonely café shift, and the McPheron brothers' stumbling attempts at hospitality. Guthrie and Maggie's connection is seeded quietly in a school staff lounge long before it becomes romantic. The rhythm of daily life in Holt — collecting payments, riding horses, visiting family, buying cribs — gives the novel its texture and shows how isolation and community coexist in a small town.

The quieter moments that reveal character and build connection.

Victoria's mother confronts her in the bathroom, calls her a 'stupid little slut,' and threatens to throw her out.

Bobby is knocked off his feet by a kicking cow during cattle work, and Guthrie leaps the fence and tells his boys he is proud.

Russell makes a remark in class that causes Victoria to flee the room in front of all her classmates.

Ike and Bobby take Donny Lee Burris to the abandoned house and a neighbor with a shotgun chases all three of them away.

Maggie's senile father, Mr. Jackson, slaps Victoria across the face after mistaking her for an intruder in the house.

Raymond and Harold discuss Maggie's request alone and quietly agree to take Victoria in despite having no idea what they are doing.

Guthrie brings Ike and Bobby to spend Ella's last night in Holt with her, eating supper and playing cards together.

Raymond quietly places extra blankets on Victoria's bed while she sleeps through her first night at the farm.

Guthrie meets with Principal Crowder and the Beckman family in a disciplinary hearing, and Russell is suspended for five days.

A stranger at a bar makes a crude remark about Victoria and Raymond, and Raymond grabs the man's wrist and warns him to stop.

Elko the horse dies of a twisted gut, and Guthrie allows Ike and Bobby to watch the vet perform the full autopsy.

Guthrie and Maggie dance together at a bar and spend the night together at her house for the first time.

Dwayne chases Victoria to the bus station and yanks away her red purse, but the driver helps her board without it.

Victoria returns to the McPheron farm, apologizes, and asks the brothers to take her back; she cries silently when they agree.

Dwayne arrives at the McPheron farm demanding Victoria leave with him; the baby falls when he grabs her arm, and the brothers throw him out.

Plainsong is driven by a series of moments in which characters are forced to confront something they cannot escape — a slap, a death, a secret, a long-overdue reckoning. Victoria's journey from a girl whose own mother insults her to a woman who calmly reclaims her home is traced through a sequence of shocks and quiet acts of grace. The McPheron brothers move from mute bewilderment to genuine fatherly devotion through small gestures, like Raymond adding blankets in the dark or confronting a man who slanders Victoria's name. Guthrie learns — painfully, through violence and isolation — that honesty and closeness are worth pursuing. By the time Dwayne is thrown off the farm and the baby is safe in Raymond's arms, every character has been irrevocably changed by the choice to reach toward someone else.

The decisions, discoveries, and emotional shifts that define each character's journey.