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Home Field: A Novel
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Home Field: A Novel
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Home Field: A Novel
Ebook421 pages7 hours

Home Field: A Novel

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

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About this ebook

The heart of Friday Night Lights meets the emotional resonance and nostalgia of My So-Called Life in this moving debut novel about tradition, family, love, and football.

As the high school football coach in his small, rural Maryland town, Dean is a hero who reorganized the athletic program and brought the state championship to the community. When he married Nicole, the beloved town sweetheart, he seemed to have it all—until his troubled wife committed suicide. Now, everything Dean thought he knew is thrown off kilter as Nicole’s death forces him to re-evaluate all of his relationships, including those with his team and his three children.

Dean’s eleven-year old son, Robbie, is withdrawing at home and running away from school. Bry, who is only eight, is struggling to understand his mother’s untimely death and his place in the family. Eighteen-year-old Stephanie, a freshman at Swarthmore, is torn between her new identity as a rebellious and sophisticated college student, her responsibility towards her brothers, and reeling from missing her mother. As Dean struggles to continue to lead his team to victory in light of his overwhelming personal loss, he must fix his fractured family—and himself. When a new family emergency arises, Dean discovers that he’ll never view the world in the same way again.

Transporting readers to the heart of small town America, Home Field is an unforgettable, poignant story about the pull of the past and the power of forgiveness.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherHarperCollins
Release dateJul 26, 2016
ISBN9780062413758

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Reviews for Home Field

Rating: 3.3571429428571427 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

28 ratings14 reviews

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Not the best book I've ever read, but not the worst either. The plot surrounds a mother's suicide and how it affects her family, each in a different way. It was interesting but not a page turner or a book you can't stand to put down. It does reflect real life in that each person may respond to the same event in a different way, some unexpected and other unexpected. The husband finds solace in his job as a high school coach, one son who can't stop grieving until he returns to the place of his mother's death, another son who is too young to understand, and a daughter who is trying to fit in at college without motherly guidance. The ending really doesn't tie up everyone's feelings into a neat tiny package and leaves the reader wondering what how each character's future plays out because of the mother's death.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Hannah Gersen's debut novel Home Field is billed as a combination of Friday Night Lights and My So-Called Life. That's quite a high bar to set, and Gersen clears it with room to spare.Dean is a successful high school football coach in a small Maryland town. He runs a terrific program, and is known and respected throughout the town. Years ago he married a young widow, Nicole, whose husband was a high school football hero. Nicole and her husband were high school sweethearts and had a young daughter, Stephanie, when he was diagnosed and died.Nicole suffers from depression, perhaps she never got over the loss of the love of her life. Dean was smitten with her and young Stephanie, and they married and had two boys of their own, Robbie and Bryan.As the story opens, Nicole commits suicide and is found by her eleven-year-old son Robbie. Stephanie is set to go away to college, and struggles with leaving her brothers and father to go so far from home. Robbie begins cutting class and acting out, and finally finds salvation by participating in the high school play.Bryan has spending more time with Nicole's sister and her family, devoutly religious people. Bryan finds solace in religion, much to Dean's concern. He feels that his sister-in-law is unduly influencing his young son.Coaching a successful high school football program is a time-consuming profession, and Dean comes to the conclusion that he needs to step down for the sake of his children. He also becomes involved with Robbie's school counselor, a woman he knew when she was a substitute teacher at his school.Stephanie is trying to find her way in the world, and Gersen really nails the feelings of a young woman adrift. She is grieving the loss of a mother she loved, feeling angry that her mother abandoned them all, and sad that her mother was suffering so. She also feels guilty that she has left her brothers behind.Reading this part of the story took me back to my own time going away to college, so vivid is the connection between Stephanie's experiences and most young women. Bravo to Ms. Gersen.Just when Dean thinks he is losing it all, an opportunity to temporarily coach the girls cross country track team falls in his lap. He misses football, and he forms a connection with the girls that gives him a sense of control and accomplishment he is lacking in his personal life.Gersen does a wonderful job with the setting and characters of her story. She has the small town atmosphere just right, and we care deeply about these people, even as we see them making mistakes. Dean in particular needs to learn the importance of verbal communication with his children. They need to talk about what happened to them, and he, like many men, has trouble with that.Home Field is an emotional, moving book that touched my heart. Gersen's ability to write so beautifully and realistically in the voices of Dean, Stephanie and Robbie is quite an accomplishment. I recommend Home Field to anyone who loves a good family story.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I enjoyed this book, but then didn't, but then did.....what didn't I like? The main character, but then again I kind of did. Sometimes being a parent isn't black and white, sometimes being a spouse isn't written out and sometimes coping is done differently. This book made me accept the characters for who they were, or who they were trying to find....themselves. I personally hated them for not accepting God, but then again they were barely making it at some points. One part of the book became almost a psychological trip...the feels were pushed to much....the look into ones own psychi was laced with to many felt emotions on the inside of the mind (all this makes since when you get through the book to this part). I wanted the book to end a few chapters sooner, however, I was happy to see the conclusion that it had. This entire story had no happy ending...maybe it ended with a happy re beginning, and that had to be enough. All in all this book offers a raw view of people, people that are lost, hurt, left and broken....if you are into real stories, lives, feelings and just people this book it for you. personally, I LOVE those things so this book was a comfort and a pleasure to get to look into their lives.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Before this book even begins in earnest, the reader learns that Nicole has committed suicide, leaving her husband and three children grief-stricken and confused. What follows is an exploration of sadness, love and the importance of family. This is a slow moving, quiet novel and works well as a depiction of family in despair. It does focus so much on family that all side characters are not well explored and even the small town where they live is often alluded to but never fully developed which I found to be frustrating at times. That said, I thought the familial relationships were fully explored and I found myself rooting for them all to come through their sorrow in the end. I received this book through LibraryThing in exchange for an honest review.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Home Field is not my typical read, but I enjoyed delving into this poignant story of life, loss, family, and forgiveness. I was pulled into the story and could relate, in one way or another, with each character—possibly because I tragically lost my mother at a tender age.Each family member grieves and deals with Nicole’s death in his or her own way, creating a fractured family and an environment of conflict. I only wish I could’ve gotten to know them a bit better. The emotions feel somewhat surface level, making me wish for more.The main reasons I rate this less than four stars is because the middle was repetitive and lacked fluctuation in pacing, and I wished the characters were given more depth. This would have given their struggles a bit more oomph. I received an Early Reviewer Copy from LibraryThing.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A wonderful debut with characters that are so well-written that the reader feels as if they know them. Ms. Gersen has built a world for her characters that they truly live in. During a family vacation at Dean's father's horse farm, Nicole hangs herself in the barn and her eleven-year-old son, Robbie finds her. Dean and Stephanie return from a horse ride to the sound of sirens and the sight of an ambulance at the horse barn.The rest of the novel follows the family through the next six months or so of their grief and their attempts to move forward.Ms. Gersen writes about real feelings, real dilemmas, real victories, and real losses. Dean resigns his position as head football coach and takes the less time-consuming job of coaching the girls' long distance running team. The struggles of the team and the coach mirror Dean's struggles with his kids, Stephanie, Robbie, and Bryan. He tries to understand how they are grieving while simultaneously working through his own grief.Stephanie decides to move forward with her college plans and finds herself lost in the campus world. Lonely, grieving, and nonsocial, she shuns her roommate, struggles with her psychology course and parties with another outcast, Raquel. Like Dean, she struggles through her grief while trying to keep moving forward.The novel focuses on Dean and Stephanie, but the two boys, Robbie and Bry, and their extended family, Aunt Joelle, cousin Megan, grandparents from all sides and friends in the small town are all well-defined. I thoroughly enjoyed the writing. The resilience of the characters is refreshing. The suicide is central but not overwhelming. Described in the prologue, the reader does not yet know anything about Nicole so the sadness of her death takes time to sink in as her family deals with their loss.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Home Field shows the struggle of a family trying to go on after the mother's death. It's not always pretty, but it feels real.There's the Dad who wants to do right by his kids, but can't seem to do anything other than coach sports. His kids are reeling - one is super smart but makes dumb choices, the other is acting out, and the youngest is just trying to make everyone laugh. Their stories are sad, but relatable. This was a good multi-generational drama. The only thing holding me back from giving this story 4 or more stars is that it felt repetitive in the middle. The characters kept having the same fights over and over again.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    As one reviewer said, this is a cozy read. Almost too comfortable for me. It's the story of a football coach who loses his wife and is left alone with three children to raise. Dean is struggling to care for his children and understand and deal with their grief. He is also trying to overcome his own grief and unfortunately I didn't care for the decisions he made in his own now sad life. I was expecting more drama but somehow the story fell flat. Guess I wanted more football, more sensitivity from the dad, and characters that I really cared about. A very entertaining read but not memorable. I won this book from LibraryThing.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This wasn't really the book I expected from the description when I requested it from LibraryThing's Early Reviewers. The story about a family coping with loss in their own ways was interesting at times, but didn't really grab me enough to make me really care about how their lives ended up.The characters were a bit predictable and one-dimensional. I was interested in the book, since my mom attempted suicide several times and I thought I'd relate to some of the issues faced, but I didn't get that attached to the characters, since they didn't seem to have much depth. They seemed more like caricatures than full characters at time.The story didn't seemed to just end without much of a real ending to many of the plot lines. At least I wasn't too invested in the story, so it wasn't as big of an issue as it would have been if I really wanted to know more about them.Not a bad book, but I'd hope the next one would be more polished.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    When you build a life and then the rug is pulled out from under you, it can be hard to find a way forward, especially if life changes completely unexpectedly, without warning. In Hannah Gersen's novel, Home Field, one family in rural, small town Maryland has to rebuild themselves after a suicide tears them apart, reconfigures their family, and makes each of them reexamine their priorities.Dean is the local football coach. He's a huge figure in the community, a minor celebrity of sorts, not least because his teams through the years have been incredibly successful. He is consumed by his coaching, especially since he's a little bit lonely in his marriage sometimes. Despite this, when on a family vacation to his father's farm, his wife Nicole, hangs herself, he is blindsided. In the wake of her suicide, he needs to try and pick up the pieces not only of his own life but also that of their children. Stepdaughter Stephanie is reluctantly getting ready to leave for college for the first time and her ambivalence about leaving her remaining family comes out in rebelliousness and acting out. Eighth grader Robbie, who likes acting over sports, is the one who found his mother in the barn. He starts cutting school and running off as his way to deal with his grief. And sweet little Bry works hard at seeing the best of everyone, trying to cause no one any trouble in this already overwhelming time.As Dean tries to find the way through for his children, he finds that everything has changed. Football can no longer dominate his every waking hour. He resigns, taking on the less time intensive job of coaching the girls' cross country team. But even with more attention from their father, the kids are floundering. And Dean is too. He feels badly for having feelings about another woman. He is confused and feels guilty even though nothing he could have done would have fixed Nicole's depression. All he can do for himself and his children is to fumble through and do his best, learning what they all need to start healing as they go along.This is a quiet novel, all of the action taking place in the aftermath of Nicole's suicide. Gersen has done a nice job showing the impact of this sad and desperate act on a family and the children, including extended family in the character of Nicole's sister. She allows her characters to struggle and to make poor decisions, highlighting the fact that each person is affected differently and must grieve in their own way. The narration shifts, showing Dean, Stephanie, and Robbie's internal concerns, hopes, and fears, and making their poor decisions more sympathetic to the reader than they might have been. The narrative tension is not particularly high at any point even though there are plot situations that might have raised it. In fact, this business of the everyday, shot through with the complication of making a new life without Nicole, is, for the most part, unremarkable, sensitive, and realistic.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is the story of a family and the challenges they deal with when the mother commits suicide. Each family member has to come to terms with what she's done and it's difficult at each age level of the children and the father. Some of the book was really good reading. Some of it was extremely disappointing such as the ending. After a very climatic part of the book, the story just ends. Thank you LibraryThing for selecting me to read this book.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I won a copy of Home Field in the GoodReads Giveaway. It is the story of a football coach, his teenage daughter and young sons in the aftermath of his wife's suicide. While the book is well written, I had a hard time connecting with the characters. Dean seems to be pretty clueless and doesn't step up to the plate to care for his family which makes him hard to relate to and understand. Stephanie comes off as being pretty bratty and even though I wanted to feel sorry for her I had a hard time doing so. For me it was entertaining but not a book I'll remember down the road.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    This book is a little slow and a little depressing. I found myself not much liking Dean the main character. With the family's problems this may be understandable but he makes some poor decisions. I do like stories of this type involving regular, real folks and how they behave. This one just seems to not have much uplifting about it nor a very satisfying wrap up. Just my opinion.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Home Field is not my typical read, but I enjoyed delving into this poignant story of life, loss, family, and forgiveness. I was pulled into the story and could relate, in one way or another, with each character—possibly because I tragically lost my mother at a tender age.Each family member grieves and deals with Nicole’s death in his or her own way, creating a fractured family and an environment of conflict. I only wish I could’ve gotten to know them a bit better. The emotions feel somewhat surface level, making me wish for more.The main reasons I rate this less than four stars is because the middle was repetitive and lacked fluctuation in pacing, and I wished the characters were given more depth. This would have given their struggles a bit more oomph. I received an Early Reviewer Copy from LibraryThing.