The team is about to compete in the national semifinals, and they actually have a shot at winning-a win that could bring a new hockey school, commerce, and prosperity back to Beartown.

Now, the seventeen-year-old boys who make up Beartown’s junior ice hockey team carry the immense weight of all the town’s hopes and dreams on their shoulders.

But down by the lake stands an old ice rink, home of the hockey club that has long been the sole source of entertainment and pride for the townspeople, and the only possible ticket out of town for the young men who grew up playing hockey there. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.īeartown is a small community on the brink of disappearing into the surrounding forest as the town loses more and more young people and commerce to the larger surrounding towns. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. This reading group guide for Beartown includes an introduction, discussion questions, and ideas for enhancing your book club. In this story of a small forest town, Fredrik Backman has found the entire world. Accusations are made and, like ripples on a pond, they travel through all of Beartown, leaving no resident unaffected.īeartown explores the hopes that bring a small community together, the secrets that tear it apart, and the courage it takes for an individual to go against the grain. All the hopes and dreams of this place now rest on the shoulders of a handful of teenage boys.īeing 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. Their junior ice hockey team is about to compete in the national semi-finals, and they actually have a shot at winning. And in that ice rink is the reason people in Beartown believe tomorrow will be better than today.

But down by the lake stands an old ice rink, built generations ago by the working men who founded this town. A tiny community nestled deep in the forest, it is slowly losing ground to the ever encroaching trees. From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Anxious People, a dazzling and profound novel about a small town with a big dream-and the price required to make it come true.

Beartown novel