Literary Fiction spotlight
Broken Country
by Clare Leslie Hall
A dead man, a farming village, and a first love that never quite ended.
Buy the book
In the sleepy village of Dorset, a shot rings out. A man is dead. Beth knows exactly how her family arrived at this moment - and it began the day her first love came home.
Publisher's blurb
Synopsis
Beth is happily enough married to a farmer when Gabriel, the man she loved at nineteen, returns to the village with a young son. What follows is a slow, deliberate reconstruction of how an ordinary marriage becomes a courtroom, told across three timelines that converge on the gunshot in the opening pages. A book about grief, class and the specific loneliness of loving two people badly.
The editorial feature
Structurally immaculate. Hall withholds exactly the right facts for exactly the right length of time, and the rural Dorset setting is written with a farmer's practicality rather than a tourist's romance. One of the year's most assured literary page-turners.
Book details
- Genre
- Literary Fiction
- Released
- 4 March 2025
- Publisher
- Simon & Schuster
- Featured on
- 4 March 2025
Where to buy
Broken Country is available from these retailers.
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