The inspiration for Broken Country came when Clare Leslie Hall’s dog ran into a field full of sheep and was threatened by a gun-toting farmer. Leslie Hall pictured three characters: a farmer, his wife, and a young boy. These became Frank and Beth Johnson, and Leo, the son of Beth’s first love, Gabriel Wolfe.
The novel, set in north Dorset, opens with a tragedy: a farmer is dead from a gunshot wound to the heart. Broken Country moves between the events which culminate in a murder trial in 1969, and 1955, when schoolgirl Beth first meets Gabriel, the “famously handsome boy from the big house”.
These two lonely teenagers “waiting for their lives to begin”, fall hard for each other, but when he leaves for Oxford, their relationship fails. Gabriel finds success as a writer, while she marries Frank, who has adored her since their days on the school bus.
In 1968, Frank and Beth are stranded on a “shared black rock of grief”, following the death of their son, Bobby, in a farm accident. When newly divorced Gabriel returns to his family home with his son, she and Gabriel rekindle their relationship.
The 100 best Irish books of the 21st century: No 100 to No 51
Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall: A vivid, forceful love story that plays out like a thriller
The Sorrow and the Loss by Martin Dillon: Women whose lives were blighted by the Troubles
‘These things happen’: Book returned to Kildare library after 74 years
Beth Johnson is a devoted farmer’s wife, whereas Beth Kennedy was a girl willing to let her first love affair shape her heart forever. These two identities are key to the novel, for Beth loves both men.
She talks herself into a second chance at first love, despite knowing she is no longer that impressionable teenager: “You can never change back once you’ve had a child, even if that child no longer exists.”
Only in the courtroom do we discover who is on trial and the details of the death – an excellent piece of withholding on the author’s part. I had assumed that would be the big reveal, but it is the first of several, each more startling than the last. (No surprise that the film rights were snapped up, to be produced by Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine.) A few notes don’t quite ring true, such as at the scene of her son’s fatal accident, Beth immediately refers to him in the past tense, but ultimately this is a vivid, forceful love story which plays out at the pace of a thriller.
