Amat’s teammates beat him up for his disloyalty, and they also beat up Bobo, who has become Amat’s friend and stands up for him at the last minute. In particular, Sune refuses to promote Kevin to the A-team, believing he doesn’t yet have the requisite maturity. This lonely, scorned figure learns herbs and potions, surrounds herself with lions, and, in a heart-stopping chapter, outwits the monster Scylla to propel Daedalus and his boat to safety. A thoroughly empathetic examination of the fragile human spirit, Backman’s latest will resonate a long time. It divides the town into those who think it should be hushed up and forgotten, and those who'll risk the future to see justice done.

This is a story about what it really means to be a part of a pack and how much courage it takes to stand on your own for what you believe in. After one particular game, a young girl is raped by a player, and these accusations tear apart the team and the townspeople (players, coaches, parents, friends, fans, and sponsors — all with different interests). It is getting smaller and smaller each year, as there are less and less jobs and not many things that would attract new people and investors. He notices 15-year-old Amat, a player on the boys’ team, practicing sprints on the ice, and he urges David to consider the boy for tomorrow’s game.Sweden’s own King Carl XVI Gustaf encouraged victims to share their stories, citing the movement as a positive step for Swedish society. We celebrate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander stories, traditions and living cultures; and we pay our respects to Elders past and present.

The characters are fully developed and their actions have motivations and consequences that fully immerse the reader in their lives. Minor characters include Sune, "the man who has been coach of Beartown's A-team since Peter was a boy," whom the sponsors now want fired. At the time it was published, Backman, a college dropout, had been working night shifts as a forklift driver in a warehouse, writing during the day. Kevin's father believes that Maya's accusation is a lie and that Peter, out of jealousy, intentionally reported it the day of the final to cause the team to lose. And as she grows in power, she muses that “not even Odysseus could talk his way past [her] witchcraft.

Everything was done in such a quiet voice that still somehow managed to get louder and clearer than a scream. The town's barkeep believes Maya and Amat's story and convinces a large group of hockey fans to vote in Peter's favor, resulting in Peter keeping his job. Being 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. He has been a mentor and father figure to generations of Beartown hockey players, including Peter and David.

Many of the Beartown players chose to remain in Beartown and play, since their team was saved by a couple of board members and sponsors who refused to leave. A thoroughly empathetic examination of the fragile human spirit, Backman's latest will resonate a long time. His books are published in more than thirty-five countries and he has sold over seven million copies. He will eventually testify to the police and become alienated from the team after Kevin is arrested. In 2018, the Rockingham County School Board removed the book from the reading list of McMichael High, a high school in North Carolina, when parents described it as "vulgar" and "graphic".I usually prefer books written from a single perspective, but in this case many, many POVs were much needed to fully paint the story. The club has high expectations from him and has invested heavily to ensure that he succeeds more than the other players on the team. With Ana’s encouragement, Maya decides to tell her parents what happened the following Saturday, right before the hockey final. Beartown is my top pick from Fredrik Backman’s catalog of books, all of which I have read, and the Beartown books are extremely popular with readers of The Literary Lifestyle as well, so I wanted to give you more information about each of the three beloved books in the series, whether for your own personal use, educational use, or even for a book club. Daniel James Brown’s 2013 nonfiction work, The Boys in the Boat, also touches on the role of sports—in this case, rowing in the Depression-era United States—in building community identity and pride.