All the hopes and dreams of this place now rest on the shoulders of a handful of teenage boys.īeing responsible for the hopes of an entire town is a heavy burden, and the semi-final match is the catalyst for a violent act that will leave a young girl traumatized and a town in turmoil. Their junior ice hockey team is about to compete in the national semi-finals, and they actually have a shot at winning. And in that ice rink is the reason people in Beartown believe tomorrow will be better than today. But down by the lake stands an old ice rink, built generations ago by the working men who founded this town. A tiny community nestled deep in the forest, it is slowly losing ground to the ever encroaching trees.

His touch is delicate, understated, even, and wields great power.Official Synopsis from Goodreads: The #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Man Called Ove returns with a dazzling, profound novel about a small town with a big dream-and the price required to make it come true. Backman observes the dark in people, but also the light. There are some wonderfully moving moments when the inner kindness of the town's inhabitants is revealed.

It's about surviving in the face of hardship it's about growing, and the strength that can come from loyalty and a shared sense of passion. This is a book about guilt, and the destruction it can wreak on relationships. The club's general manager, Peter Andersson, feels his family drifting slowly apart as they struggle to deal with what happened to his daughter, Maya.īackman takes the shattered fragments of the community and deftly pieces them together once more.

One of the players is photographed kissing his male lover, and the photo goes viral. The team's long-standing coach retires and is replaced by a woman with an unusual coaching style. All the best players have left for the neighboring town of Hed, and the team's sponsors have followed them. The pride and joy of the community is the local ice-hockey team. Life isn't supposed to be easy, after all. Life isn't easy for the inhabitants of the town, but they shrug off their difficulties with pride. 'Beartown' is a tough, hard-working community deep in the forest. Fredrik Bachman's latest novel, 'Us Against You,' follows on from the events of his previous novel, 'Beartown,' and asks the question: How does a town recover from a divisive and shocking event that rips a community apart?

Us against them beartown