Jeff Hull explores the tensions that tear at the fabric of a small town when a hazing incident threatens a championship season in his second novel. Broken Field, told from the perspective of a high school girl and a football coach, is set on the high prairie of Montana, in small towns scattered across vast landscapes.
Life is dusty and hard, and men are judged by their labor. Women have to be tougher yet. That’s what 16-year-old Josie Frehse learns as she struggles to meet the expectations of her community while fumbling with her own desires.
Tom Warner coaches the Dumont Wolfpack, an eight-man football team. The coach is stumbling through life, numbed by the death of his own young son and the dissolution of his marriage. But he’s jolted into taking sides when his star players are accused of a hazing incident that happened right under his nose.
“A sharp-eyed, often touching portrait of a fractured community and a harshly beautiful landscape,” writes Kirkus.
Hull, a freelance writer who lives in Huson, is also the author of Streams of Consciousness, a collection of outdoor essays, and the novel Pale Morning Done. Broken Field is a finalist for the Western Writers of America’s 2019 award for Best Western Contemporary Novel.