Publishers Weekly
★ 07/26/2021
PW reviewer Flanagan’s masterly debut novel (after the collection It’s Not Going to Kill You) dissects a young woman’s disappearance from a small town in 1980s Nebraska and the pervading suspicions throughout the community. Twelve-year-old Milo Ahern discovers his 16-year-old sister, Peggy, missing from her bed on a Sunday morning. Her family, assuming she has snuck out again to drink, makes excuses for her. But when her absence lingers, rumors begin to spread and fingers are pointed at Hal Bullard, an intellectually disabled 28-year-old farmhand. Alma Costagan, the brash school bus driver and Chicago transplant whose farm Hal works on alongside her husband, Clyle, defends Hal, though blood in Hal’s truck and reports of him returning early from a hunting trip raise questions. The narration oscillates between Alma reflecting on her 14 years of isolation in the town, her five miscarriages, and the pain of Clyle’s affair with a local woman; and Milo, a nerdy misfit struggling to cope with his sister’s disappearance and his longing to leave the tiny town behind. Flanagan balances the mystery and its surprising resolution with her emotionally rich character explorations. This is a standout novel of small-town life, powered by the characters’ consequential determination to protect their loved ones at any cost. (Sept.)
From the Publisher
"This is a standout novel of small-town life, powered by the characters' consequential determination to protect their loved ones at any cost."—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“With incisive prose and finely wrought tension, Deer Season is an absorbing tale of a small town that is both severed and knitted together by tragedy. This book does not just return us to a forgotten place and time; it recreates it for us. This is fiction at its finest.”—Melissa Fraterrigo, author of Glory Days
“Flanagan subverts the traditional whodunit by pointing the reader not just to multiple suspects but, more importantly and humanely, to the many victims of a single act of violence. She also does it with grace and humor, and without fetishizing or parodying her Nebraskan characters. . . . That it’s compelling, fun, and highly readable is simply the cherry on top.”—Xhenet Aliu, author of Domesticated Wild Things, and Other Stories
“Flanagan takes clear-eyed aim at the foibles and strengths of the human heart, ultimately plumbing its tenderness through characters whose lives in Middle America are deftly rendered through a riveting plot. . . . Nuanced with unsentimental empathy, Deer Season delivers a literary mystery that will leave readers thinking about these characters and their story long after turning the last page.”—Jess Montgomery, author of the Kinship series of historical mysteries
