The story "starts right here and ends in less than two weeks, and how much can happen in two hockey towns during that time? Not much, obviously. Only everything." Fredrik Backman (Britt-Marie Was Here; A Man Called Ove) opens The Winners, translated from the Swedish by Neil Smith, with a tease. This, the final novel of his Beartown trilogy, is a big-hearted, epic novel, bouncing between hope and tragedy as smoothly as a puck flying down the rink.
Readers new to Beartown and Hed, the adjacent Swedish towns and hockey rivals of Backman's Beartown and Us Against You, will quickly pick up their culture and bitter history. Backman's omniscient narrator inserts foreshadowing: "Naive dreams are love's last line of defense," he warns on page one. When he writes that "all that holds us together in the forest is our stories," readers are reminded, as the beloved proprietor of the Bearskin bar says, that "everything and everyone is connected around here, whether they like it or not."
The "two weeks" of the novel includes backstories: the unforgettable violent act in the trilogy's second novel; ongoing shady political and business dealings that threaten one town's team and an iconic coach's reputation; deep love between husbands and wives, parents and children; and friendships that span decades. Opening with a fierce storm that finds two women, one from each town, overcoming daunting odds to deliver a baby in the forest, and ending with the introduction of a skater who one day "will make us feel like winners again," Backman brings his saga to an often brutal but ultimately heartwarming and hopeful conclusion. --Cheryl McKeon, Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza, Albany, N.Y.