Beartown (Beartown, #1)

by Fredrik Backman

“Never trust people who don’t have something in their lives that they love beyond all reason.”

This is, in many ways, one of the most recurring themes throughout the whole Beartown book trilogy. People often ask me why I chose hockey, and not another sport, to write about, and the answer is this: Hockey demands everything. It’s so hard to do, it’s so incredibly time consuming, and you can’t do it alone. So if you don’t love it beyond all reason to begin with…forget it. Go do something easier, less demanding. If you want to play hockey it’s BECAUSE it is hard. It requires love, all of it. And love makes you sensitive and easily offended. I did my best to explain throughout the book series that sometimes that’s why people involved in it make really bad decisions, thinking that they’re protecting the sport or the team or the town or the family. It’s all intertwined. There’s no separation between this sport and everything else. It demands too much. That’s why I chose it. And that’s why the dedication to start THE WINNERS, the last part of the trilogy, is: “To you who talk too much and sing too loud and cry too often and love something in life way more than you should.”