Published September 2021 by University of Nebraska Press
Publisher's Summary:
It’s the opening weekend of deer season in Gunthrum, Nebraska, in 1985, and Alma Costagan’s intellectually disabled farmhand, Hal Bullard, has gone hunting with some of the locals, leaving her in a huff. That same weekend, a teenage girl goes missing, and Hal returns with a flimsy story about the blood in his truck and a dent near the headlight. When the situation escalates from that of a missing girl to something more sinister, Alma and her husband are forced to confront what Hal might be capable of, as rumors fly and townspeople see Hal’s violent past in a new light. A drama about the complicated relationships connecting the residents of a small-town farming community, Deer Season explores troubling questions about how far people will go to safeguard the ones they love and what it means to be a family.
My Thoughts:
You know I was one of the first people the ladies at TLC Book Tours thought of when they were asked to host a tour for a book set in Nebraska. And you know I didn't hesitate to say "yes" when they asked me if I'd review it. But after it arrived, I began to worry. What if it was one of those books that makes all of the people in Nebraska look bad? What if I really didn't care for it? I wasn't entirely sure it was the right book at the right time for me, even after I'd started it. Then I realized that the University Press had published the book and they have never steered me wrong yet. So I pressed on, convinced that this would be a book worth reading. I was so right and by page 50, I was racing through this book even though it is a slow-build of a book, focused as it is on its characters.
Alma Costagan is right up there with Olive Kitteridge as one of my all-time favorite characters who make it hard to like them but then you find yourself so attached to them.
Alma met Clyle in college; he'd grown up in Gunthrum but she was a city girl. When they married, they never had any intention of living on a farm. But life doesn't always give you what you're expecting. When Clyle's father dies and his mother falls ill, Clyle and Alma move back to his parents' farm to care for it while she's still alive. But after she passed, first one thing and then another kept them just a while longer. Soon Alma realized that Clyle was really happy as a farmer and she agreed to become a farmer's wife and give up her career as a social worker because she loved him that much. But life in a small town in tough for newcomers and Alma, to be honest, didn't make it any easier for people to like her. That disappointment heaped on the disappointment of not having a family began to wear on the Costagan's relationship.
One thing they did still agree on was that they would both do whatever it took to protect Hal, who they had taken under their wing when his father was imprisoned and his mother left town. Still, when Hal comes up early from a hunting trip with blood in his truck and throughout his house, telling them that he had shot a deer but made a mess of it trying to dress it, they both had suspicions about his story. When they find out that Peggy Ahern, a girl that Hal had a crush on, had gone missing, they both defended Hal from the inevitable town gossip even as they began to wonder what Hal might be capable of doing, even accidentally and what they might be willing to do to protect him.
That's the suspense piece of this novel. But at it's heart, this is less a suspense novel than it is a work of literary fiction. It's a book about relationships - between spouses, between parents and children, between siblings, between neighbors. It's also a book about the secrets we keep, the dreams we hold tight to our chests, communication, guilt, and, yes, what it means to live in a small town where, even if you don't know absolutely everyone, you know enough of them so that, sooner or later, everyone knows your business even if they don't really know you.
“The list of what one person would never understand about another went on and on.”
This is an impressive novel, particularly when you consider that it is Flanagan's debut. I felt like I knew these people. Of course, I especially enjoyed the references to places I'm familiar with, including the town I was born in. But living in Nebraska is not a prerequisite for enjoying this book; I highly recommend it.
About Erin Flanagan:
Erin Flanagan is a professor at Wright State University. She is the author of two short story collections, The Usual Mistakes (Nebraska, 2005) and It’s Not Going to Kill You, and Other Stories(Bison Books, 2013).
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