The Winners: A Novel (Beartown Series)

She will sing about this autumn, when the forest turns against us with full force. She will sing that all communities are the sum of their choices and that all that holds us together in the end are our stories.

Everyone who knew Benjamin Ovich, particularly those of us who knew him well enough to call him Benji, probably knew deep down that he was never the sort of person who would get a happy ending.

Obviously we still hoped. Dear God, how we hoped. Naive dreams are love’s last line of defense, so somehow we always convince ourselves that no terrible tragedies will ever afflict those we love, and that our people will succeed in escaping fate.

But every time we tell the story now we commit new sins, because we pretend that what Amat did is normal. It isn’t, of course. Hardly anyone does what he did. Mumble is the normal one. He’s the one who’s like the rest of us.