The Novel, Broken Country, Made Me Scream, "Don't Do It!"

How will it affect you?

Slow and sultry

You might not think that a novel set in a small English country village with sheep farmers, a pub, and a quiet country estate would generate a simmering, sultry love story and a violent murder, but you'd be wrong. It's the rural setting that contributes to the slow, intense burn of emotion in the novel, Broken Country, by Clare Leslie Hall.

The pastoral setting gives a false sense of peace, one that is shattered with the opening scene. Frank and Beth Johnson are out with their flock when the dog rushes in and viciously attacks the sheep. Frank is forced to shoot the dog to save their sheep, an action witnessed by a little boy named Leo, who has followed his dog onto the sheep farm.

As if it's not enough that a quiet married couple of farmers have their sheep attacked, kill the attacking dog, and traumatize the dog's young owner, a good-looking man arrives, following his son, Leo. It turns out that this man is a former resident of the town. Gabriel Wolfe is a writer who made it big. From a wealthy family, Gabriel was Beth's first love, the man who broke her heart and irreversibly altered her life.

And now the screaming begins...

Beth and Frank have been married for more than a decade, a marriage that was deep and loving but was rocked by grief when their young son, Bobby, died in a tragic accident. Like many parents of children who die young, Frank and Beth nurse private pain over the loss of their son: guilt, grief, resentment, and loneliness.

You know the feeling that something terrible is going to happen? That if you could only get there quicker or yell a warning, you could stop a horrible event?

Once, my junior-high-aged daughter played softball and was positioned as catcher. For some reason, she had turned backward to the umpire when the pitcher lobbed a ball. My mother's heart nearly stopped as I watched my daughter turn around, mask up, unknowingly positioning her face as a perfect target for the ball. I watched the trajectory of the ball, seemingly in slow motion, unable to get there fast enough, knowing that her face was going to be smashed. (She got a black eye and a bloody, but not broken, nose.)

That's how this book made me feel. I saw everything happening in slow motion, knowing that it was going to end badly, but unable to stop what lay ahead.

Can an ex-lover ever be just a friend?

It's an age-old question.

Can you be "just friends" with an ex-lover? Can you re-establish ties with that ex-lover without silently hoping that this time, things will be different?

When Beth decides to help Gabriel Wolfe when he is working by babysitting his son, I wanted to scream at her at the top of my lungs, "DON'T DO IT!"

Instead, I watched with an excruciating sense of foreboding, the tumbling chain of events that Beth Johnson's actions set in motion.

A great plot twist in Broken Country

Kudos to the author, Clare Leslie Hall. As bad as it seemed the events of the story were going to be, she never gave away the plot twist. I knew something tragic was coming, but I didn't guess what it was, and I was stunned when it was revealed. The plot of Broken Country was a skilled work of craftsmanship. (In an interview, Hall said that Broken Country was a nod to The Go Between by LP Hartley, a novel I'm not familiar with and don't know how they're related.)

The Google AI snippet review of Broken Country suggests that it's a fast-paced novel. I found it intense and sultry, but not fast-paced. It flashes back and forth between Beth's life in the present and Beth's life in the past, a writing strategy that doesn't fuel "all-speed-ahead" reading.

In addition to Frank and Beth Johnson, along with Gabriel Wolfe and his son, Leo, the book is populated with likeable but flawed characters. There's Frank's brother, Jimmy Johnson, a likable drunk who falls for the town's lovely barmaid. There's a caring grandfather, a wealthy mother who cares only for status, and a beloved little boy who once was.

More than a love story, Broken Country is also a murder mystery and a case study of the impact of loss, grief, and trauma. It's a reminder that your actions will always impact someone else, and fidelity to your spouse is of vital importance.

Reese's Book Club

Books are selected by celebrity book clubs when they are good reads with popular appeal. Broken Country was Reese Witherspoon's choice for March of 2025. The novel has sold over a million copies and was on the New York Times bestseller list.

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