Broken Country

Clare Leslie Hall

A dual-timeline literary novel set in rural 1950s-60s England, following Beth, a woman whose quiet marriage to a gentle sheep farmer is upended when her first love returns to the village years after breaking her heart. The story opens with a death and a police investigation, then unwinds the decades of buried history, grief, and longing that led to it. It's as much a slow-building courtroom mystery as it is a story about the lasting pull of first love and the compromises of an ordinary life.