My reading goes in fits and starts. Sometimes I am so plugged into a book that nothing else can capture my attention. Other weeks I pick up and put down one book after another and just don't get past the first few pages.
About two years ago I read a very special book and wrote my blog "Impact" on November 1, 2022. The book was Beartown by Fredrik Backman and it was about hockey! When I brought it up from the Eastcastle library and realized what it was about I almost took it back. But within the first few pages I realized this book contained so much more than one sport.
A few weeks ago I found the next book in the trilogy, Us Against You. I finished it today. Once again, hockey in a small town....but so much more. I could have underlined quotes from dozens and dozens of pages. Toward the end these two stuck out for me.
"It's so easy to place your hope in people. To think that th world can change overnight. We demonstrate after an attack, we donate money after a disaster, we lay our hearts bear online. But for every step forward we take, we take an almost equally large step back. Seen over time, every change is so slow that it's barely visible when it's happening."
"The path back to normal life is indescribably long once death has swept the feet out from under those of us who are left. Grief is a wild animal that drags us so far out into the darkness that we can't imagine ever getting home again. Ever laughing again. It hurts in such a way that you can never really figure out if it actually passes or if you just get used to it."
A book about hockey but so much, much more. The quote from The Washington Post sums it up better than I can, "A lyrical look at how a community heals, how families recover, and how individuals grow."
The third in the series is titled The Winners. I'm on the hunt for that one now.
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