The Tie That Binds (novel)

It is the story of 80-year-old Edith Goodnough of Holt County, Colorado, as told to an unnamed inquirer on a Sunday afternoon in the spring of 1977 by her 50-year-old neighbor.

The story opens with the narrator, Sanders Roscoe, defending his neighbor Edith Goodnough to a reporter trying to dig up dirt on her.

They stay late into the night, drinking and having a good time, but on the way home Lyman crashes his car, causing Mavis to miscarry and giving himself a head injury from which he never truly recovers.

As they grow older and frailer, Edith decides to move everything downstairs and close off the second story, and enlists Sanders' help.

She has Lyman put on his best clothes, cooks a three-course dinner for him, waits for him to fall asleep and then sets fire to their house.

In the spring of 1977 Edith is still lying in a hospital bed with a policeman stationed outside her room and facing charges of attempted murder.

In 2019, a dramatization of The Tie That Binds, adapted by Carol Samson, was featured in that year's Kent Haruf Literary Celebration, performed in his hometown Salida.