Spoilers for the novel, Beartown, ahead. This is going to be a longer post but PLEASE read it through. This book, and I, have a story to tell. 

As I was sitting in the Baton Rouge Airport on a normal muggy Sunday, waiting for my flight home to Maine, I did not expect to be shaken down to my roots…

As I referenced in my post about Chris and Liz’s wedding, I sat in the BR airport for around 7 hours. It happened to be a nice airport, with large windows letting in lots of natural light, but very small. I could walk the whole length of it in 5 minutes. Early morning being the only time I could get dropped off and flight delays were the reasons for the long wait time. I was a little nervous, because Jenna and long stretches of free time do NOT mix well together. At the MSNBC kiosk, I bought some snacks, and was looking at the books on the shelf. All new fiction and nonfiction and of course, overpriced. 

This one caught my eye. The cover reminded me of John Green novels, which I am not overly fond of, but I still read the short blurb on what it was about…

“People say Beartown is finished. A tiny community nestled deep in the forest, it is slowly losing ground to the ever encroaching trees. But down by the lake stands an old ice rink, built generations ago by the working men who founded this town. And in that ice rink is the reason people in Beartown believe tomorrow will be better than today. Their junior ice hockey team is about to compete in the national semi-finals, and they actually have a shot at winning. All the hopes and dreams of this place now rest on the shoulders of a handful of teenage boys.

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. Accusations are made and, like ripples on a pond, they travel through all of Beartown, leaving no resident unaffected.”

Well, that was enough to catch my eye. I picked it up and went to the register. I BEGGED the worker, Gabriel, to let me sit outside the store and read it to help me pass the time to my flight. He, to my great surprise, let me, and I spent the next 5 hours reading and ultimately finishing the book. It was 432 pages, and I luckily ended with enough time to return it and catch my flight, but it was pretty close and I didn’t think I was going to make it. A fun fact you might not have known about me-I can actually read a book quite fast if I want to. I read another lengthy book called The Power (another fantastic read if you have the time, and even if you don’t you should still read it) in two days while I was in Florida.

Ok, that’s great Jenna. Why do we need a whole blog post about this one book about hockey?

I’m so glad you asked. I’m going to try to give you the summary and premise quickly. Strap in your seatbelts.

The book takes place in a small forest town in Sweden. However, as I was reading it, about 90% of the time I could picture in my readers imagination it being an American town somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. The town centralizes on hockey, and it is the only way they stay economically relevant. The town is dying, and the only way these people are going to survive is by having their hockey team win the championship. There is a lot of exposition and deep character development leading up to the semi-finals, with stories following members of the hockey team (the star player, the one whose really good but also a rebel, the lowest on the food chain, etc.) the daughter of the hockey club manager, the manager himself, his wife, the coach, many many perspectives of the citizens of Beartown. They win the semi-finals, and the star player Kevin throws a party at his house. The party, as you can imagine if you have known hockey players, is wild and out of control, but Kevin who is 17/18 and the manager’s daughter Maya, who is 15 or just turned 16, end up in his quiet bedroom alone. The book up to this point has been building up to the fact that Maya has a huge crush on him etc.

And then in like one paragraph the whole tone shifts as Kevin, this star player, the perfect leader and young adult, precedes to and successfully rapes Maya right there in his bedroom. She tried to fight him, but she was no match at all for the guy who is a physical wonder in the prime of his youth.

The rest of the book after this climax is the aftermath of Maya’s rape and what it does to Beartown. The whole town is divided after Maya finally goes to the police after telling her parents what happened, as she couldn’t keep it a secret forever. The police arrest Kevin as the team is heading to the finals, and they lose without him, effectively killing whatever hope Beartown had of surviving. The whole town and especially the parents of the rest of the members of the hockey team blame Maya for what happened, and following acts of violence and victim-blaming tactics happen to her to try to scare her into further silence. Kevin is released and not brought to trial due to lack of evidence. The book ends with Maya taking a shotgun and meeting Kevin on his run through the woods and coming very close to killing him. She decides not to, and the book pretty much ends there after most of the influential/rich people of the town move away to the neighboring one and have their kids play hockey for that town, leaving Maya’s family and those who were loyal to her the remaining residents of Beartown. However, the story I will admit is complicate. The truth that Maya said did in fact cost a lot of people their jobs and their livelihoods in the end. The parents of the team were angry with her because it is their kids hockey careers that they have poured all their money and time into to give them a chance to succeed beyond the forests of Beartown that she has ruined by coming forward.

Woah…

Imagine getting on a plane and stewing in that for the next 8 hours of travel.

Along with the theme of sexual assault, the book also had themes of homophobia, immigration, and gender roles. I wish I had the time to go through all of these, as I said there was deep character development for the large cast of characters leading up to the rape. But I will share one moment of the book that particularly hit me hard.

Benji (the really good player but also rebel) happens to be Kevin’s best friend. Benji at this point does not believe Kevin when he said the sex was consensual. In other words, he knows Kevin is full of shit and is lying to the town and to himself. He runs into Maya in the school bathroom where she has just shattered a mirror by punching it after being called a slut by her classmates. He just looks at her, he doesn’t say anything, and she walks out bleeding. She stops after she hears him literally rip the sink from the wall and trash the rest of the bathroom. I would have been confused as to why he did that if the author did not explain it as he ended the chapter. Benji trashed the bathroom to cover up that Maya broke the mirror, because he had nothing more to lose as the “rebel kid” by getting suspended for doing it, while Maya had her whole credibility on the line as she was already being labelled as an unreliable victim who acts in anger. Isn’t that wild?

Benji probably became my favorite character for doing that and being the only one who knew Kevin was lying and still deciding not to stick up for a rapist.

…

1 in 4 girls in America have in some way been sexually assaulted, and I think about the girl’s retreat I am going on this weekend in which 12 girls are attending.  I think about my closest friends, girls who I call sisters, and I think of their stories. Their eyes haunt me. I have held the weight of a witness for so many, I bet if I were to tell you, you would be shocked to your core as I have been time and time again. It haunts me almost every night as I wonder-

What could I have done? What could I have done? What could I have done to stop this madness?

I read somewhere once that it is the price we pay for walking through the world as women, and ain’t that the truth, I guess. If it weren’t, then we wouldn’t have such a frightening statistic, now would we?

This book was only one story, one girl, the smallest piece of a larger narrative that shows no sign of slowing down. I’ve written so much painful poetry on this subject, always shrouded in metaphor because the truth is like lemon juice on open wounds. Nobody wants to hear that ugly truth.

There is healing for Maya at the end. There is healing in all of the stories I’ve heard from my friends. And sometimes there’s not. Recovery, I have learned the hard way, is not a straight line; more of a Gordian knot in the pit of the stomach. There is so much hurting, so much lack of basic respect in this world, I do wonder sometimes how I manage to walk through it every day. But we persevere, because that’s what women do and have done since the beginning.

For the men who read this, I know you can be better. I know you can put aside the masculinity this culture and media have taught you is right and appreciate women for what they are-beautiful, treasured, loved, respected, caring, amazing creatures God has designed. Instead of thinking how you can get a girl to like or pay attention to you, or how to shame her if she doesn’t bolster your ego, think about how treasured and respected you should make her feel, and give her the freedom and right to occupy as much space as you do wherever you go. If you’re a guy and reading this, there is a good chance I know you. So with nothing but love and hopefulness from the bottom of my heart, I leave you with these words from Olivia Gatwood in her fantastic performance poem, Ode to the Women of Long Island-

“If you ever, I mean ever, so much as make a women feel uncomfortable, I will take you to the deli and put your hand through the meat slicer.”

~J