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Deer Season
It’s the opening weekend of deer season in Gunthrum, Nebraska, in 1985, and Alma Costagan’s intellectually disabled farmhand, Hal Bullard, has gone hunting with some of the locals, leaving her in a huff. That same weekend, a teenage girl goes missing, and Hal returns with a flimsy story about the blood in his truck and a dent near the headlight. When the situation escalates from that of a missing girl to something more sinister, Alma and her husband are forced to confront what Hal might be capable of, as rumors fly and townspeople see Hal’s violent past in a new light.
A drama about the complicated relationships connecting the residents of a small-town farming community, Deer Season explores troubling questions about how far people will go to safeguard the ones they love and what it means to be a family.
A drama about the complicated relationships connecting the residents of a small-town farming community, Deer Season explores troubling questions about how far people will go to safeguard the ones they love and what it means to be a family.
320 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2021
63 people are currently reading
3494 people want to read
About the author
Erin Flanagan
5 books169 followersErin Flanagan's forthcoming novel, Come with Me (Thomas & Mercer), releases in August 2023. Her novel Deer Season (University of Nebraska Press) won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel by an American Author and was a Macavity finalist for Best First Mystery. Her second novel, Blackout (Thomas & Mercer) was a June 2022 Amazon First Reads pick. She is also the author of two collections: It's Not Going to Kill You and Other Stories, and The Usual Mistakes. Erin is an English professor at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, and a regular book reviewer for Publishers Weekly. For more information about her and her writing, please visit www.erinflanagan.net or say hello on Twitter at @erinlflanagan.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 182 reviews
February 7, 2023
One of those books in which you (meaning me) know within the first five pages that the rest will be good. It starts with a character, a morning in a small town, living on a farm no less. A character who would turn out to be a main protagonist, though this book is a first-person narrative told through multiple points of view. Alma, a fifty-something, very headstrong woman feels she is an outsider in this small community. Her becoming the protagonist is a bit of a surprise, but it's a good one too because she feels like the right character to learn about in this place. Not starting with the crime itself, or making the parents of the missing child the lead characters told me that although the the crime is still a center of the novel, it is not the only story to be told. There is loss in many facets, for each character, but there is also daily living, coping, and other things that make up a life. The simple crime procedural is not my go-to anyhow. I found this story distinctive for not being so. Saying literary can sound cliché, but it's a welcome term, and a good one to use here. A definite recommend.
April 29, 2022
Real Rating: 4.75* of five, rounded up because rounding down to four feels so...mingy...over some stupid w-bombs when the story was so deeply engrossing & moving
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: Have you looked at the cover image of this book? Go on, get your nose up to the screen...now did you notice the shape of that "D" in "Deer"? There's a clue in it.
Author Flanagan, no stranger to the "Flyover Fiction" series with two story collections in it, here gives us her first novel. It's set thirty-five years ago in a rural place that, in our own time, has doubtless vanished entirely. Farming being the corporate endeavor it is now. This time, the one we're inhabiting in this novel, feels like something from a Russian novel with peasants and kulaks and tsars in their palaces so far above us. Actually, it's just families farming land they'd inherited and living lives they don't feel embarrassed by.
The major event of the novel is the disappearance of teenaged minx Peggy Ahern. The rampant drinking culture of the area and era was the source of the problem...Peggy, too smart and too young to control it yet, was in the habit of sneaking out on weekends to partake of the big, wild world of the after-hours partying at Castle Farm. You know, as practice for when she'd be off at college.
But one fine night...the one before her little brother's going to be confirmed in the Lutheran Church, no less...she doesn't come home to have her hangover in her bed. And days go by. She doesn't come home; she isn't Found; and the town decides that Hal Did Something. Hal, big and nice-looking but sadly with an intellectual incapacity, has about an eleven-year-old's scope to understand the world. And an adult man's body, and an adult man's needs; without the wherewithal to get context of Peggy's flirting, or realize when he was going too far in responding to her. As he does for the first time at a town picnic. In front of everyone, including Peggy's drunk father.
But Alma and Clyle step in, as usual. They are his de facto parents and they, as has been their habit for a decade or more, disentangle him from the worst of the consequences. They took him on when he was still in high school, and really into their family, partially because they could never have kids. They're in their late fifties, so a twenty-eight-year-old man-child is the right age and, though Alma would bristle at the idea, his absence of adulthood soothes an ache left from desiring motherhood and not being given it.
Now, though...now the town that Clyle isn't much inclined to leave but Alma genuinely despises is in formation against Hal, their only family, their changeling chick, and despite their staunch stance in support of him they begin to wonder. After all...temper and strength of a man...no functioning social sense...pretty girl he fell for when she flirted with him....
There's a long, slow road to follow, like driving on the noisy gravel roads of the area, to get to the deeply saddening and utterly infuriating resolution to the plot. But you already know: Hal will never, ever be free of the stain of Being A Suspect. Rightly or wrongly accused, accused is enough. In the end, the resolution to the disappearance is...curiously irrelevant. Secrets get unburied in hearts that just don't open that easily. Words are said, the kind that never heal, the kind that have to lacerate for the pain to find a way out. But the world changes every day, and how many times do we get to look that change in the eyes as it comes at us? To decide, yes I will do this or no I can't be that any more. To use the horror of a life-altering misery for good; to sluice the life-long wretchedness of old and dirty hurts out.
Those moments are, and I expect all y'all know it, rare, and horrible, and greatly to be treasured.
What Author Flanagan does with this story is to make the inevitable a damn sight more high-stakes for everyone than it usually is in real life. Milo, the preteen brother, is the one who quietly and completely revamps his life. Alma and Clyle are old, but there's no need to die before you lie down! Their souls, despite never getting what they wanted, still yearn...so the world after the crisis is resolved (and the resolution made me so goddamned mad I screamed at the book) takes a deeply familiar form.
It's a funny old thing, fiction, it lets us work through our bitterest disappointments safely. It doesn't promise it'll be fun. In the case of this novel, the satisfaction of the plot's resolution is mostly schadenfreude. I know some people think there's a Sanctity about Motherhood, but I am decidedly not among them. I don't think Author Flanagan is, either. This is her third book, though first novel, all in the "Flyover Fiction" series. Her two story collections, 2013's It's Not Going to Kill You, and Other Stories, and 2005's The Usual Mistakes, all have mothers without maternal credibility in them.
I can't give the book all five stars because there are so many w-bombs dropped that I've got sleaze-shrapnel in every single one of my eyes. I don't enjoy stories with as much helplessness as this one made me feel...the fact is that from the moment we learn Peggy's disappeared, we know there can't be a Happy Ending...but this story's not about the ending. It's about the ways and means of putting a life together when you don't have a single solitary scrap of hope. It's about loving someone enough to be sure they have dinner when you'd like to brain them with a rock. It's about what happens when you can not even try one more time, then you get up and do the chores because they don't do themselves.
I would strongly encourage you to read it, to get your eyes into it. The way the world is today, we need this example of making the effort because there's work that needs doing inside, outside, betwixt and between. And Author Flanagan (her penchant for w-bombs aside) does this with assurance and in a style replete with the smallest pleasures of being in this world of the senses.
January 22, 2022
Great writing and a terrific (very human) storyline!
This is the author’s debut novel released last year (she published two collection of short stories, “The Usual Mistakes” in 2005 and “It’s Not Going To Kill You…” in 2013).
This is my first book by this author.
Here, the development of the storyline is very slow and the story does not seem to take off, but you get to feel everyone’s beating heart.
This could be a slow burn to some readers, especially to those who likes a fast read.
The year is 1985 and the setting is in a very small rural community named Gunthrum, Nebraska.
This is more than the mystery of a missing teenage girl. It’s a drama about the complicated relationships connecting the residents of a community.
How far will you go to protect the ones you love?
I would have missed this book if it wasn’t for a recommendation in a group of readers that I follow on Facebook.
Although the title suggests killing of animals, there was nothing upsetting about it. Only one deer was killed, a dog was shot dead (for a reason) and one cat lost its tail (by accident), but there was no animal cruelty or gory details.
I would like to see this book adapted for the screen.
This is the author’s debut novel released last year (she published two collection of short stories, “The Usual Mistakes” in 2005 and “It’s Not Going To Kill You…” in 2013).
This is my first book by this author.
Here, the development of the storyline is very slow and the story does not seem to take off, but you get to feel everyone’s beating heart.
This could be a slow burn to some readers, especially to those who likes a fast read.
The year is 1985 and the setting is in a very small rural community named Gunthrum, Nebraska.
This is more than the mystery of a missing teenage girl. It’s a drama about the complicated relationships connecting the residents of a community.
How far will you go to protect the ones you love?
I would have missed this book if it wasn’t for a recommendation in a group of readers that I follow on Facebook.
Although the title suggests killing of animals, there was nothing upsetting about it. Only one deer was killed, a dog was shot dead (for a reason) and one cat lost its tail (by accident), but there was no animal cruelty or gory details.
I would like to see this book adapted for the screen.
January 2, 2022
This book is just so human, with a cast of perfectly imperfect characters who find themselves reflecting on who they are and what they believe as their town faces a horrible tragedy.
"What amazed her was that she and Clyle had kept secrets, not that they had them... The keeping might be more painful than the secret itself."
Flanagan's writing pulls you right into the story and doesn't let go, making you feel as if you're there with the characters in 1985 rural Nebraska, experiencing what they experience and, more importantly, feeling what they feel. The murder mystery element takes a backseat to the characters' emotional struggles, but overall these two aspects are woven together perfectly to complement rather than overpower each other. Highly recommend!
"What amazed her was that she and Clyle had kept secrets, not that they had them... The keeping might be more painful than the secret itself."
Flanagan's writing pulls you right into the story and doesn't let go, making you feel as if you're there with the characters in 1985 rural Nebraska, experiencing what they experience and, more importantly, feeling what they feel. The murder mystery element takes a backseat to the characters' emotional struggles, but overall these two aspects are woven together perfectly to complement rather than overpower each other. Highly recommend!
April 26, 2023
A quietly chilling mystery that pulls back the thin veil covering secrets in a rural Nebraska town.
Walking into his sister's room one Sunday morning to rouse her for church, 12-year-old Milo Ahern finds an empty bed instead of free-spirited 16-year-old Peggy. Her parents choose to downplay the disappearance to avoid attention and embarrassment, but within a few days it's clear that Peggy isn't coming home. The town of Gunthrum pulls together with covered dishes and righteous outrage, but soon rumors are flying that a local man, 28-year-old Hal Bullard, is responsible.
Hal was deprived of oxygen at age two after nearly drowning in a local swimming hole, a tragedy that left him with a developmental disability. He works as a farmhand for Alma and Clyle Costagan, a couple in their early 50s who farm pigs and live quietly, at a remove from most of their neighbors. Alma, an outsider from Chicago who moved to Gunthrum with Clyle, a local boy, nurses the deep wounds left by multiple miscarriages and other secrets that a long-time marriage inevitably engenders. When suspicions land on the vulnerable young man that Alma has come to love like a son, her latent resentment of this small town and her small life in it boil to the surface.
Written with a clear and confident voice that calls up her Midwestern forebears Willa Cather and Jim Harrison, as well as contemporary Midwesterner William Kent Kruger, Erin Flanagan has crafted a nuanced, moving story that centers a mystery but is really about the individuals who come together to create a community. There are a few head-scratching choices that reveal an author moving the characters around like chess pieces to force plot points (the community meeting, the odd insertion of a bullheaded private eye, the sheriff's choice to appear at church to deliver bad news), but this deeply satisfying drama is not to be missed.
Walking into his sister's room one Sunday morning to rouse her for church, 12-year-old Milo Ahern finds an empty bed instead of free-spirited 16-year-old Peggy. Her parents choose to downplay the disappearance to avoid attention and embarrassment, but within a few days it's clear that Peggy isn't coming home. The town of Gunthrum pulls together with covered dishes and righteous outrage, but soon rumors are flying that a local man, 28-year-old Hal Bullard, is responsible.
Hal was deprived of oxygen at age two after nearly drowning in a local swimming hole, a tragedy that left him with a developmental disability. He works as a farmhand for Alma and Clyle Costagan, a couple in their early 50s who farm pigs and live quietly, at a remove from most of their neighbors. Alma, an outsider from Chicago who moved to Gunthrum with Clyle, a local boy, nurses the deep wounds left by multiple miscarriages and other secrets that a long-time marriage inevitably engenders. When suspicions land on the vulnerable young man that Alma has come to love like a son, her latent resentment of this small town and her small life in it boil to the surface.
Written with a clear and confident voice that calls up her Midwestern forebears Willa Cather and Jim Harrison, as well as contemporary Midwesterner William Kent Kruger, Erin Flanagan has crafted a nuanced, moving story that centers a mystery but is really about the individuals who come together to create a community. There are a few head-scratching choices that reveal an author moving the characters around like chess pieces to force plot points (the community meeting, the odd insertion of a bullheaded private eye, the sheriff's choice to appear at church to deliver bad news), but this deeply satisfying drama is not to be missed.
October 31, 2021
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Enjoyed this one a lot. Well written. Atmospheric setting. Intriguing plot. Slow moving, yet suspenseful. Interesting and well-developed characters. I maybe wanted a little more out of the ending, but overall this was a solid two thumbs up read!
**ARC Via NetGalley**
Enjoyed this one a lot. Well written. Atmospheric setting. Intriguing plot. Slow moving, yet suspenseful. Interesting and well-developed characters. I maybe wanted a little more out of the ending, but overall this was a solid two thumbs up read!
**ARC Via NetGalley**
July 6, 2021
“The list of what one person would never understand about another went on and on.”
This book! A quiet, wrenching slow burn about a small Nebraska town torn apart by the disappearance of sixteen-year-old Peggy Ahern—I dare you not to get pulled into the town’s drama. I dare you not to become unreasonably attached to the characters, but especially to Milo, Peggy’s younger brother, who is way too smart and perceptive for his own good. He’s simultaneously trying to keep it together for the adults in his life and get away with staying up past his bedtime. (Also Milo: “He wondered if for the rest of his life he’d think about the time his sister went missing while he watched it snow.” I mean, my God.)
The people and town of Gunthrum, Nebraska are so vividly drawn, through details that are heartbreaking in their specificity, but almost more palpable are the town’s secrets. As the characters make casseroles and ride the bus to school and go hunting, unease simmers just below the surface. The terror of eating a Lifesaver and thinking your jaw might be welded shut forever; the painful intimacy of seeing how another man organizes the tools in his barn. The little things are the big things as the characters reckon with the nature of family, love, parenthood, and keeping a hog farm running in the midst of a crisis.
Keenly observed, tense, affecting, and funny. This is a book that will stick with you.
Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC!
This book! A quiet, wrenching slow burn about a small Nebraska town torn apart by the disappearance of sixteen-year-old Peggy Ahern—I dare you not to get pulled into the town’s drama. I dare you not to become unreasonably attached to the characters, but especially to Milo, Peggy’s younger brother, who is way too smart and perceptive for his own good. He’s simultaneously trying to keep it together for the adults in his life and get away with staying up past his bedtime. (Also Milo: “He wondered if for the rest of his life he’d think about the time his sister went missing while he watched it snow.” I mean, my God.)
The people and town of Gunthrum, Nebraska are so vividly drawn, through details that are heartbreaking in their specificity, but almost more palpable are the town’s secrets. As the characters make casseroles and ride the bus to school and go hunting, unease simmers just below the surface. The terror of eating a Lifesaver and thinking your jaw might be welded shut forever; the painful intimacy of seeing how another man organizes the tools in his barn. The little things are the big things as the characters reckon with the nature of family, love, parenthood, and keeping a hog farm running in the midst of a crisis.
Keenly observed, tense, affecting, and funny. This is a book that will stick with you.
Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC!
March 14, 2022
"She eventually began to realize that in Gunthrum there wasn’t much to do, so everyone killed the hours and days sniffing around someone they shouldn’t."
*****
I'm so blown away by DEER SEASON that I hardly have the words for it right now, as I'm just buzzing with the quiet glowing joy of having discovered something brilliant completely outside the Big Publisher Buzz Machine, even though it has gotten some of its deserved spotlight through its nomination for the prestigious Edagr Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best First Novel. So this is one of those reviews I'll be adding onto here and there as my thoughts come together. Right now I'm still coming down from the best kind of high there is.
DEER SEASON is a first novel by Erin Flanagan, but it displays non of the self-conscious MFA-workshop tics and overwriting common to debut novelists who exist in the academic universe. In every passage and on every page, it displays a calm, confident, page-turning assurance that does not depend on overheated twists or superjacked displays of performative emotion. It simply starts with a solidly devised premise and deepens in dark shading as it goes.
This is a "missing girl" mystery, and yet it isn't. It contains none of the tiresome tropes common to the contemporary-thriller genre. It's 1985 in the small farming town of Gunthrum, Nebraska, and Peggy Ahern, a pretty teenager, has disappeared. Has she run off? Has she been killed? With each passing day, locals fixate on the latter outcome, and suspicion falls first on Hal Bullard, a developmentally disabled young man with a history of bar fighting who was known to have been infatuated with Peggy. But this is no "men brooding over girls as a way of working through their own masculinity" story, as so many in this genre are.
The primary POV characters are a grown women and a young boy. Alma Costagan, who reluctantly moved from Chicago with her Gunthrum native husband Clyle, and her often-abrasive, no-nonsense manner has not endeared her to most of the locals. She's never been able to have children of her own, and her maternal instincts have gone out to Hal, the Costagan farm's employee, who she's semi-mothered ever since his own mother left town — to the point that she's willing to do whatever she feels she has to in order to protect Hal even if he is guilty. She is a fascinating blend of awareness and blindness, of love and hurt, of anger and grace, and any can — and often does — get over on the other with each development in the story.
The other is Milo Ahern, Peggy's twelve-year-old brother, whose comparative invisibility next to his attention-getting sister allows him to see the older teens and adults for their flaws — open and otherwise — and process his own complicated feelings about his sister even as he develops some ideas about who might be responsible for Pegg's disappearance.
Between Alma and Milo, they deal with a number of townspeople all harboring secrets of their own: spouses stepping out on one another, married men letching after teen girls, drinking too much, etc. — any of whom could possibly be responsible. The two aren't allies but more like blind townspeople grabbing different parts of the unknown until they realize they've got an elephant. And the fact that it could plausibly be any number of people in Gunthrum exposes the rusty-lace scaffolding that drunkenly props up the structure of the town's society. And that appears to be Erin Flanagan's real theme in DEER SEASON, with the plot as merely a vehicle for making larger points about the rips and ragged seams in the cultural fabric. Flanagan's unerring eye for unobtrusive but perfectly distilled observation of those folks — farmers, pastors, bored kids, nosy bankers — gives DEER SEASON a powerful divinity that elevates it to the first rank of American literature, in my opinion.
One thing that makes me enthusiastic about any book is its seemingly endless quotability. I keep highlighting and wanting to share DEER SEASON's dozens of little nuggets of delight and insight, especially relative to the period. Some favorites:
"None of his old clothes fit, so his mother took him to the Southern Hills Mall in Sioux City, and now his wardrobe was mainly Dire Straits and Glenn Frey T-shirts and the kind of tight jeans guys wore on TV."
"Alma always spoke her mind, something many of the women around here didn’t understand. They’d been raised to be deferential to their men and social norms, neither of which Alma gave a hoot about. It was one of the things he had loved about her in the beginning."
"He wobbled back and forth between worrying she was really missing, like truly not here, and the thought that she was in Lincoln, Nebraska, right this minute drinking daiquiris through a straw in some meathead’s dorm."
"Men were the root of all problems, she was convinced, even though she sometimes had to sit on her hands to keep from slapping the silly women in town when she was forced to attend meetings for the library board."
"I’ll have Herb give you a call. He and his brother are on a hunting trip, along with every other person in Nebraska with a gun."
"The logistics of an affair had always baffled him—the cloak and dagger of it all, the hidden rendezvous—but turned out it wasn’t as romantic as he’d thought, the sweet and dusty smell of ground corn in the air."
"He would have made a good bachelor, he liked to think. Not one who went in for the rabble-rousing but one who could keep himself well enough occupied on a weeknight with one drink (maybe two) and a rerun of M*A*S*H. But sometimes, out on the farm all day, around three or four o’clock in the afternoon, he’d say something to one of the hogs—'Shoo' or maybe 'Settle down now, there'—and the sound of his own voice in the silence would be like a stranger’s, the croak unrecognizable. He wanted a partner to love."
"A woman with a secret is a dangerous thing.”
"Didn’t he deserve a little happiness? It made him sick to think he’d thought that the only way to find it was at the expense of his wife."
"The only reason he even agreed for me to go to night school for my nursing degree was because I promised I’d have dinner warming in the oven at 200 before I left at six o’clock."
"Milo had noticed this about churches: they were the only place fathers took the lead on parenting, rushing temperamental babies to the lobby or fussy toddlers to the restroom. They acted like heroes, but Milo had it figured out: they just wanted to skip church. Sometimes two or three men would huddle in front of the kitchen, sneaking free doughnuts no one was supposed to touch until the service was over, their children running like little maniacs under the tables."
"Peggy flirt-whinnied from the stairway, a sound he recognized from the halls of school and the phone and basically anytime a guy talked to her at a football game."
"There were few things that made Alma as mad as a woman who got to be a mother and screwed it up."
"You’re Christians in the middle of Nebraska. Who could be less persecuted than you?”
“People don’t think emotions should be a part of policing, but they are. It’s a lot like parenting—you try to use them for the good and do what’s right while staying within the laws you’ve laid down.”
*****
I'm so blown away by DEER SEASON that I hardly have the words for it right now, as I'm just buzzing with the quiet glowing joy of having discovered something brilliant completely outside the Big Publisher Buzz Machine, even though it has gotten some of its deserved spotlight through its nomination for the prestigious Edagr Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best First Novel. So this is one of those reviews I'll be adding onto here and there as my thoughts come together. Right now I'm still coming down from the best kind of high there is.
DEER SEASON is a first novel by Erin Flanagan, but it displays non of the self-conscious MFA-workshop tics and overwriting common to debut novelists who exist in the academic universe. In every passage and on every page, it displays a calm, confident, page-turning assurance that does not depend on overheated twists or superjacked displays of performative emotion. It simply starts with a solidly devised premise and deepens in dark shading as it goes.
This is a "missing girl" mystery, and yet it isn't. It contains none of the tiresome tropes common to the contemporary-thriller genre. It's 1985 in the small farming town of Gunthrum, Nebraska, and Peggy Ahern, a pretty teenager, has disappeared. Has she run off? Has she been killed? With each passing day, locals fixate on the latter outcome, and suspicion falls first on Hal Bullard, a developmentally disabled young man with a history of bar fighting who was known to have been infatuated with Peggy. But this is no "men brooding over girls as a way of working through their own masculinity" story, as so many in this genre are.
The primary POV characters are a grown women and a young boy. Alma Costagan, who reluctantly moved from Chicago with her Gunthrum native husband Clyle, and her often-abrasive, no-nonsense manner has not endeared her to most of the locals. She's never been able to have children of her own, and her maternal instincts have gone out to Hal, the Costagan farm's employee, who she's semi-mothered ever since his own mother left town — to the point that she's willing to do whatever she feels she has to in order to protect Hal even if he is guilty. She is a fascinating blend of awareness and blindness, of love and hurt, of anger and grace, and any can — and often does — get over on the other with each development in the story.
The other is Milo Ahern, Peggy's twelve-year-old brother, whose comparative invisibility next to his attention-getting sister allows him to see the older teens and adults for their flaws — open and otherwise — and process his own complicated feelings about his sister even as he develops some ideas about who might be responsible for Pegg's disappearance.
Between Alma and Milo, they deal with a number of townspeople all harboring secrets of their own: spouses stepping out on one another, married men letching after teen girls, drinking too much, etc. — any of whom could possibly be responsible. The two aren't allies but more like blind townspeople grabbing different parts of the unknown until they realize they've got an elephant. And the fact that it could plausibly be any number of people in Gunthrum exposes the rusty-lace scaffolding that drunkenly props up the structure of the town's society. And that appears to be Erin Flanagan's real theme in DEER SEASON, with the plot as merely a vehicle for making larger points about the rips and ragged seams in the cultural fabric. Flanagan's unerring eye for unobtrusive but perfectly distilled observation of those folks — farmers, pastors, bored kids, nosy bankers — gives DEER SEASON a powerful divinity that elevates it to the first rank of American literature, in my opinion.
One thing that makes me enthusiastic about any book is its seemingly endless quotability. I keep highlighting and wanting to share DEER SEASON's dozens of little nuggets of delight and insight, especially relative to the period. Some favorites:
"None of his old clothes fit, so his mother took him to the Southern Hills Mall in Sioux City, and now his wardrobe was mainly Dire Straits and Glenn Frey T-shirts and the kind of tight jeans guys wore on TV."
"Alma always spoke her mind, something many of the women around here didn’t understand. They’d been raised to be deferential to their men and social norms, neither of which Alma gave a hoot about. It was one of the things he had loved about her in the beginning."
"He wobbled back and forth between worrying she was really missing, like truly not here, and the thought that she was in Lincoln, Nebraska, right this minute drinking daiquiris through a straw in some meathead’s dorm."
"Men were the root of all problems, she was convinced, even though she sometimes had to sit on her hands to keep from slapping the silly women in town when she was forced to attend meetings for the library board."
"I’ll have Herb give you a call. He and his brother are on a hunting trip, along with every other person in Nebraska with a gun."
"The logistics of an affair had always baffled him—the cloak and dagger of it all, the hidden rendezvous—but turned out it wasn’t as romantic as he’d thought, the sweet and dusty smell of ground corn in the air."
"He would have made a good bachelor, he liked to think. Not one who went in for the rabble-rousing but one who could keep himself well enough occupied on a weeknight with one drink (maybe two) and a rerun of M*A*S*H. But sometimes, out on the farm all day, around three or four o’clock in the afternoon, he’d say something to one of the hogs—'Shoo' or maybe 'Settle down now, there'—and the sound of his own voice in the silence would be like a stranger’s, the croak unrecognizable. He wanted a partner to love."
"A woman with a secret is a dangerous thing.”
"Didn’t he deserve a little happiness? It made him sick to think he’d thought that the only way to find it was at the expense of his wife."
"The only reason he even agreed for me to go to night school for my nursing degree was because I promised I’d have dinner warming in the oven at 200 before I left at six o’clock."
"Milo had noticed this about churches: they were the only place fathers took the lead on parenting, rushing temperamental babies to the lobby or fussy toddlers to the restroom. They acted like heroes, but Milo had it figured out: they just wanted to skip church. Sometimes two or three men would huddle in front of the kitchen, sneaking free doughnuts no one was supposed to touch until the service was over, their children running like little maniacs under the tables."
"Peggy flirt-whinnied from the stairway, a sound he recognized from the halls of school and the phone and basically anytime a guy talked to her at a football game."
"There were few things that made Alma as mad as a woman who got to be a mother and screwed it up."
"You’re Christians in the middle of Nebraska. Who could be less persecuted than you?”
“People don’t think emotions should be a part of policing, but they are. It’s a lot like parenting—you try to use them for the good and do what’s right while staying within the laws you’ve laid down.”
February 18, 2022
Maybe a fledging genre is emerging that could be called "Nebraska Noir". In 2021, PICKARD COUNTY ATLAS used an old murder mystery to depict the dusty state of rural Nebraska in the 1970s, with all its attendant implications for small towns, rural residents barely getting by, and dissolving family relations in a world that is rapidly leaving them behind. Author Chris Harding Thornton adeptly created a sense of a failing rural culture barely hanging on.
In DEER SEASON, Erin Flanagan again addresses rural Nebraska in the recent past, this time in the 1980s. The mystery this time is the disappearance of a teenage girl. Flanagan's writing focuses less on atmosphere and more on the straightforward. Her depiction of people in the small town of Gunthrum, Nebraska, especially Alma and Milo, makes the characters the most compelling aspect of DEER SEASON. Where Thornton told her story through implications and shadows, Flanagan precisely reveals what life in Gunthrum is like through flashbacks, dialogue, and character reminiscences. Flanagan's community is middle-class, at least the rural Nebraska version of such, but there are still many personal transgressions under the surface. Infidelity, alcoholism, and drug use are endemic; character flaws a staple.
The two people who are the lead characters both reject artifice; Alma from the get go and Milo as a revelation near the end of the book. Flanagan also rejects artifice in her wordsmithing. Over and over again simple paragraphs and sentences stand out as evocative, saying more than would be expected from the brevity of the combined words. For example, at one point Flanagan writes of Alma: "Somewhere, though, in the last thirty years everything had turned upside down. Turned out he did want a woman like his mother, and Alma, once outspoken, stopped speaking much at all." In two brief sentences Flanagan captures the essence of Alma in middle age, adding context to all her actions.
Flanagan's characters aren't part of the criminal element or even on the margins, which makes the pervasive bad behavior exhibited by almost everyone that much more engrossing and revolting at the same time. Having some knowledge of rural Nebraska in the 1980s, her depiction is not too far off the mark. Finally, as an alum, I am very encouraged to see that DEER SEASON is published by the University of Nebraska Press. It is a worthy effort.
There is a reason
farmhouses have a mudroom.
It's dirty out there.
In DEER SEASON, Erin Flanagan again addresses rural Nebraska in the recent past, this time in the 1980s. The mystery this time is the disappearance of a teenage girl. Flanagan's writing focuses less on atmosphere and more on the straightforward. Her depiction of people in the small town of Gunthrum, Nebraska, especially Alma and Milo, makes the characters the most compelling aspect of DEER SEASON. Where Thornton told her story through implications and shadows, Flanagan precisely reveals what life in Gunthrum is like through flashbacks, dialogue, and character reminiscences. Flanagan's community is middle-class, at least the rural Nebraska version of such, but there are still many personal transgressions under the surface. Infidelity, alcoholism, and drug use are endemic; character flaws a staple.
The two people who are the lead characters both reject artifice; Alma from the get go and Milo as a revelation near the end of the book. Flanagan also rejects artifice in her wordsmithing. Over and over again simple paragraphs and sentences stand out as evocative, saying more than would be expected from the brevity of the combined words. For example, at one point Flanagan writes of Alma: "Somewhere, though, in the last thirty years everything had turned upside down. Turned out he did want a woman like his mother, and Alma, once outspoken, stopped speaking much at all." In two brief sentences Flanagan captures the essence of Alma in middle age, adding context to all her actions.
Flanagan's characters aren't part of the criminal element or even on the margins, which makes the pervasive bad behavior exhibited by almost everyone that much more engrossing and revolting at the same time. Having some knowledge of rural Nebraska in the 1980s, her depiction is not too far off the mark. Finally, as an alum, I am very encouraged to see that DEER SEASON is published by the University of Nebraska Press. It is a worthy effort.
There is a reason
farmhouses have a mudroom.
It's dirty out there.
August 30, 2022
An emotionally charged mystery. A young teenager disappears and a special needs man is suspected by the town’s people as being responsible for the assumed crime. In a small town in Nebraska there are lots of secrets and the gossip is rampart. This book is more of an introspection into the life rural towns. The Friday night drinking, the infidelities, the likes and dislikes and the damaging gossip that permeates the life of the people for lack of anything else to do. An interesting approach to rural mystery in which the crime serves as background for social issues in small towns in America. A very good book.
November 1, 2025
Прекрасна частково детективна, але більшою мірою драматично-психологічна історія про зникнення дівчини підлітки у маленькому американському містечку у 80-тих. Шкода, що абсолютно не розкручена. Доволі банальна історія, але показана з нестандартних кутів і персонажів. Дуже раджу!
July 20, 2021
On the surface, this is a story about two families’ anguish and a community’s speculation about the disappearance of high school student, Peggy Ahern. A few pages in, though, and it’s clear it's far more nuanced than this. Told by two narrators, Deer Season is a coming-of-age story about Peggy’s twelve-year-old brother. It’s about a brain-damaged man who is protected by some in the community and ridiculed by others. It’s about a woman whose disappointments blind her to the possibility of happiness. Long-held secrets bubble to the surface as the search for Peggy continues. Relationships splinter while some tighten. The novel takes place in rural Nebraska but Erin Flanagan’s beautifully written story is a compassionate yet unflinching examination of the universal quest to protect what is most dear: family and home.
July 15, 2021
Deer Season was a compelling, suspenseful read. I was pulled in immediately to the characters and the richness of smalltown life on the Plains. As someone with a rural Nebraska background, I was impressed with how Flanagan resisted stereotypes. This is a fabulous debut novel--there were surprises that felt true, and I became invested in all of the characters who were fleshed out so fully. HIGHLY recommend!
June 11, 2021
Loved the characters, nice mixture of quirkiness. Good story. Thanks to Netgalley for the opportunity to read this book
August 17, 2021
It's 1985 in a small town in Nebraska -- one of those towns where everyone always knows everyone's business - and one of the teenage girls has just gone missing. Did she run away or has someone taken her? Everyone in town has an opinion and they've found the person that they think is responsible. Meanwhile, her younger brother has to grow up fast as his family deals with the disappearance.
The story is told by two people - Milo, the 12 year old brother of Peggy, the missing girl and Alma, a farmer's wife. Alma was a city girl who was talked into moving to the farm after her in-laws died. She wasn't sure about the move but after numerous miscarriages she knew that she needed a change. No matter how hard she tried, the townspeople never really accepted her and she covers her loneliness with a brash personality to make people think that she doesn't care if she's accepted. Alma and her husband hired Hal, a mentally challenged young man to help on the farm and try to help him out. Alma is more of a mother to him as his own mother. As the search for the missing girl goes on - Hal begins to look more guilty. The day after the girl went missing - Hal's truck bed was full of blood and his bumper was dented and everyone knew that he had a crush on Peggy. He claimed that he shot a deer on opening day and that all of the blood was from the deer. As the townspeople blame him more, Alma and her husband take care of him and protect him from harm.
Milo was Peggy's younger brother. They were close and he knew that she often sneaked out of the house and got drunk. He's very aware of what's going on but tries to stay calm for his parents. He is forced to grow up quickly but he was a fantastic character and really was the heart of the book as he dealt with the issues of his sister's disappearance.
This book is well written and full of interesting characters - Milo was my favorite. There is a definite dichotomy of the normal day to day life - working in the barn, riding the school bus, going to the grocery vs the search for Peggy and the secrets that come out during the search.
I almost didn't pick this book up - I didn't want to read about deer hunters but I sure am glad that I did. It kept me reading long into the night to see what happened to Peggy. This is the first novel by this author and I look forward to her future books.
Thanks to the publisher for a copy of this book to read and review.
The story is told by two people - Milo, the 12 year old brother of Peggy, the missing girl and Alma, a farmer's wife. Alma was a city girl who was talked into moving to the farm after her in-laws died. She wasn't sure about the move but after numerous miscarriages she knew that she needed a change. No matter how hard she tried, the townspeople never really accepted her and she covers her loneliness with a brash personality to make people think that she doesn't care if she's accepted. Alma and her husband hired Hal, a mentally challenged young man to help on the farm and try to help him out. Alma is more of a mother to him as his own mother. As the search for the missing girl goes on - Hal begins to look more guilty. The day after the girl went missing - Hal's truck bed was full of blood and his bumper was dented and everyone knew that he had a crush on Peggy. He claimed that he shot a deer on opening day and that all of the blood was from the deer. As the townspeople blame him more, Alma and her husband take care of him and protect him from harm.
Milo was Peggy's younger brother. They were close and he knew that she often sneaked out of the house and got drunk. He's very aware of what's going on but tries to stay calm for his parents. He is forced to grow up quickly but he was a fantastic character and really was the heart of the book as he dealt with the issues of his sister's disappearance.
This book is well written and full of interesting characters - Milo was my favorite. There is a definite dichotomy of the normal day to day life - working in the barn, riding the school bus, going to the grocery vs the search for Peggy and the secrets that come out during the search.
I almost didn't pick this book up - I didn't want to read about deer hunters but I sure am glad that I did. It kept me reading long into the night to see what happened to Peggy. This is the first novel by this author and I look forward to her future books.
Thanks to the publisher for a copy of this book to read and review.
Read
May 13, 2022Set in rural Nebraska in 1985, this justly Edgar-nominated first novel is a mystery without (for the most part) a body or a detective. Teenaged Peggy Ahern, a bright and flirtatious girl, disappears the night before her younger brother Milo's confirmation at the Lutheran church. Meanwhile, the neighboring farmers Alma and Clyle are trying to make sense of just what happened during the hunting trip their intellectually disabled farmhand and surrogate son Hal went on with some guys who don't always have his best interests at heart. Soon, most of the community concludes that Peggy's been killed and that Hal surely must have done it, because everyone knew that Hal was sweet on Peggy and that Peggy had no interest whatsoever in this handsome but slow-witted fellow.
This is not a fast-paced thriller, but a deep exploration of rural lives--the hopes, the boredom, the gossip, the drinking. While it's set nearly forty years ago, and therefore lacks reference to internet, cell phones, and methamphetamine, there are things about rural and small-town life that don't change much. My recent ancestors were immigrant pioneers in the northern Midwest and plenty of my living relatives still farm or used to or grew up on a farm. My aunt and uncle catastrophically lost pigs to hog cholera early in their marriage. Some relatives have "beet rights" and others don't. I haven't often read novels that convey rural Midwestern life effectively, but I think this one gives a good sense of what one specific community could be like, and how beloved it could be for some while how stifling it could be for others. The ending is necessarily sad, but not one that would easily be guessed.
This is not a fast-paced thriller, but a deep exploration of rural lives--the hopes, the boredom, the gossip, the drinking. While it's set nearly forty years ago, and therefore lacks reference to internet, cell phones, and methamphetamine, there are things about rural and small-town life that don't change much. My recent ancestors were immigrant pioneers in the northern Midwest and plenty of my living relatives still farm or used to or grew up on a farm. My aunt and uncle catastrophically lost pigs to hog cholera early in their marriage. Some relatives have "beet rights" and others don't. I haven't often read novels that convey rural Midwestern life effectively, but I think this one gives a good sense of what one specific community could be like, and how beloved it could be for some while how stifling it could be for others. The ending is necessarily sad, but not one that would easily be guessed.
December 9, 2022
Deer Season is a slow burning rural mystery set in small town Nebraska, where gossip runs rampant, where everybody knows everybody, and where teenagers hardly ever go missing. This book is less about the missing girl and the list of suspects, and is more an introspective look into small town life. In fact, the mystery itself takes a back seat here, allowing for discussion surrounding the social issues of small town living. It's quiet and unsettling, and extremely atmospheric. But this books biggest draw is that it's written with compassion and understanding.
I've heard this book described as Of Mice And Men but, edgy a few times now, and honestly I can't really disagree with that, it certainly follows along with a similar beat. That being said, I enjoyed my time with this novel, it's distinctly human, with every character feeling so very real as they reflect upon who they are, and what's most important to them. This is, at it's core, a story about the collective anguish and suffering of a small community, it's about love and about family, and what it means to have a home.
I've heard this book described as Of Mice And Men but, edgy a few times now, and honestly I can't really disagree with that, it certainly follows along with a similar beat. That being said, I enjoyed my time with this novel, it's distinctly human, with every character feeling so very real as they reflect upon who they are, and what's most important to them. This is, at it's core, a story about the collective anguish and suffering of a small community, it's about love and about family, and what it means to have a home.
October 27, 2022
This novel is a gem amd I am afraid not many people will get to it and read it since it has the thriller mark on it by winning the Edgar for the best debut novel of the year 2022.
Is it a mystery, a thriller?
Teenager Peggy Ahearn disappears in the small (fictitious) town of Guntram, Nebraska and almost immediately the 28 yo Hal Bullard is being suspected of having something to do with it. Hal is developmentally disabled, lives on his own, but is being taken care of Alma and Clyde Costagan a couple who had four miscarriages.
It is a novel about life in a small town, about family, about secrets we hold for each other. GThe protagonists are Alma Costagan and 12 yo Milo Ahearn, Peggy's younger brother and we see the world through their eyes.
Flanagan has written a captivating novel about small town life in rural USA.
Is it a mystery, a thriller?
Teenager Peggy Ahearn disappears in the small (fictitious) town of Guntram, Nebraska and almost immediately the 28 yo Hal Bullard is being suspected of having something to do with it. Hal is developmentally disabled, lives on his own, but is being taken care of Alma and Clyde Costagan a couple who had four miscarriages.
It is a novel about life in a small town, about family, about secrets we hold for each other. GThe protagonists are Alma Costagan and 12 yo Milo Ahearn, Peggy's younger brother and we see the world through their eyes.
Flanagan has written a captivating novel about small town life in rural USA.
September 10, 2022
One of the best things about the mystery genre is the tremendous variety of styles and flavors and settings and protagonists. But I don’t think I’ve ever read anything like Deer Season. There may not be another mystery, in fact, quite like it.
That’s because. Deer Season breaks two of the so-called tenets of the genre.
One (and I should say here’s a mild spoiler coming right up) is that there is no dead body for a long, long time. For the vast majority of the novel, we are led to believe that Peggy Ahern is merely “missing.” We assume the worst, even though the fine citizens of Gunthrum, Nebraska seem to be somewhat but not overly concerned. Suspicions are rampant, and those gossipy-level speculations build a healthy dose of grim foreboding, but the normal murder-mystery paradigm is upended here. Hey, Peggy was 16. She might have been out drinking. She’s bound to turn up. Right?
Usually, a murder alone prods us to want a jaded detective or a clever amateur sleuth to restore justice and put the world back together. And most of the time that murder victim is made known in the first chapter or two. Or three. Not the case here.
Two, there is no main protagonist. By that I mean there is no clue-finder. There is no self-anointed amateur sleuth. There is no cop sniffing around. There are no private detectives. Gradually, the town begins to organize itself and marshal resources make a more formal search, but this is a group activity and some aren’t even sure it’s all that necessary. It’s 1985, by the way. Chatter about the case happens among people bumping into each other in town, not over texts. It would have been easy for Erin Flanagan to give the story a lead agent of justice, whether an upset housewife or one of Peggy’s friends who could have solved the case through sheer indignation and a series of trope-filled scenes were our amateur clue-finder must see what the authorities missed.
But part of what makes Deer Season so dramatically different than the normal mystery structure is that you don’t need that detective work because, back to point one above, there is no murder to investigate in the normal sequence that normal murder mysteries unfold.
So all of this is both caution and encouragement to leave your standard “mystery” expectations at home as you dive into Deer Season, which this year won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best First Novel (presented by Mystery Writers of America). Deer Season reads more like a straight novel, in many ways, with a mystery undertow.
And in the process of telling the story, Flanagan rotates three main points of view. First is Alma Costagan, who moved from Chicago 14 years earlier and is still feeling like an outsider. Alma has had a series of miscarriages. Babies, birth, and pregnancy (animals and humans) are a recurring motif. Second is Alma’s husband Clyle. And third is Peggy’s brother Milo, who also doesn’t feel like he belongs in Gunthrum.
And a fourth character plays a prominent role—Hal. He’s 28 and he is a farmhand for Alma and Clyle. He’s intellectually disabled. And he’s the natural one to blame for Peggy’s disappearance because there’s blood in his truck after he returns early from a hunting trip. So the slow-burn pressure is all on Hal as the townfolk buzz. Hal had a thing for Peggy, too, and who knows what might have gone wrong? Right?
Flanagan, a college English professor, writes with an unflashy style, like she’s a reporter for the Gunthrum Pioneer. Her writing is plain in the best way possible. The descriptions are earthy and never a stretch. “Linda Ahern was halfway to the barn; the December air made her cheeks pink and healthy, though as she approached, Clyle could see her hands appeared brittle and chapped, her fingers curved in against the cold.” The narrative consumes itself with the stuff of farm life—sometimes messy or bloody, often routine and repetitive. There are affairs, lies, deceptions, and more than a little attention paid to what might be considered minor interpersonal transgressions, whether it’s an inappropriate touch or a petty slander. What’s petty? And what is truly dangerous? Mean? Flanagan has a great eye for detail, right down the bottle of Dorothy Lynch salad dressing or a tin of Sucrets. She drips in backstory with ease, tinctures of the stuff as needed.
The ending fits. It’s not a stretch. It’s natural, unforced and a complete shock. It’s grounded in emotion and all the realities Flanagan has painted for us. Some murder mysteries aren’t solved through sleuthing. The answers come right up out of the soil.
That’s because. Deer Season breaks two of the so-called tenets of the genre.
One (and I should say here’s a mild spoiler coming right up) is that there is no dead body for a long, long time. For the vast majority of the novel, we are led to believe that Peggy Ahern is merely “missing.” We assume the worst, even though the fine citizens of Gunthrum, Nebraska seem to be somewhat but not overly concerned. Suspicions are rampant, and those gossipy-level speculations build a healthy dose of grim foreboding, but the normal murder-mystery paradigm is upended here. Hey, Peggy was 16. She might have been out drinking. She’s bound to turn up. Right?
Usually, a murder alone prods us to want a jaded detective or a clever amateur sleuth to restore justice and put the world back together. And most of the time that murder victim is made known in the first chapter or two. Or three. Not the case here.
Two, there is no main protagonist. By that I mean there is no clue-finder. There is no self-anointed amateur sleuth. There is no cop sniffing around. There are no private detectives. Gradually, the town begins to organize itself and marshal resources make a more formal search, but this is a group activity and some aren’t even sure it’s all that necessary. It’s 1985, by the way. Chatter about the case happens among people bumping into each other in town, not over texts. It would have been easy for Erin Flanagan to give the story a lead agent of justice, whether an upset housewife or one of Peggy’s friends who could have solved the case through sheer indignation and a series of trope-filled scenes were our amateur clue-finder must see what the authorities missed.
But part of what makes Deer Season so dramatically different than the normal mystery structure is that you don’t need that detective work because, back to point one above, there is no murder to investigate in the normal sequence that normal murder mysteries unfold.
So all of this is both caution and encouragement to leave your standard “mystery” expectations at home as you dive into Deer Season, which this year won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best First Novel (presented by Mystery Writers of America). Deer Season reads more like a straight novel, in many ways, with a mystery undertow.
And in the process of telling the story, Flanagan rotates three main points of view. First is Alma Costagan, who moved from Chicago 14 years earlier and is still feeling like an outsider. Alma has had a series of miscarriages. Babies, birth, and pregnancy (animals and humans) are a recurring motif. Second is Alma’s husband Clyle. And third is Peggy’s brother Milo, who also doesn’t feel like he belongs in Gunthrum.
And a fourth character plays a prominent role—Hal. He’s 28 and he is a farmhand for Alma and Clyle. He’s intellectually disabled. And he’s the natural one to blame for Peggy’s disappearance because there’s blood in his truck after he returns early from a hunting trip. So the slow-burn pressure is all on Hal as the townfolk buzz. Hal had a thing for Peggy, too, and who knows what might have gone wrong? Right?
Flanagan, a college English professor, writes with an unflashy style, like she’s a reporter for the Gunthrum Pioneer. Her writing is plain in the best way possible. The descriptions are earthy and never a stretch. “Linda Ahern was halfway to the barn; the December air made her cheeks pink and healthy, though as she approached, Clyle could see her hands appeared brittle and chapped, her fingers curved in against the cold.” The narrative consumes itself with the stuff of farm life—sometimes messy or bloody, often routine and repetitive. There are affairs, lies, deceptions, and more than a little attention paid to what might be considered minor interpersonal transgressions, whether it’s an inappropriate touch or a petty slander. What’s petty? And what is truly dangerous? Mean? Flanagan has a great eye for detail, right down the bottle of Dorothy Lynch salad dressing or a tin of Sucrets. She drips in backstory with ease, tinctures of the stuff as needed.
The ending fits. It’s not a stretch. It’s natural, unforced and a complete shock. It’s grounded in emotion and all the realities Flanagan has painted for us. Some murder mysteries aren’t solved through sleuthing. The answers come right up out of the soil.
Read
April 22, 2025Interesting ideas explored related to the desire to fit in even when it’s in a place you don’t even like and some of the trappings and perils of small town life.
September 1, 2021
Full review on melinas.blog
What happens when a small-town teenage girl disappears the same weekend an intellectually disabled man returns from a deer hunting trip with a bloody and dented truck and a story that doesn't make sense?
Deer Season is set in Gunthrum, Nebraska in 1985 and it explores small-town syndrome and the negative impact it can have on everyone involved. Alma Costagan moved from Chicago to Gunthrum with her husband Clyle 14 years ago to care for his sick mother, but after she passed away, the couple ended up not leaving the town. Throw in their inability to have a child and you get a city woman full of resentment towards the small town, its people and her husband because she is unable to make friends, she is often the butt of people's jokes and she feels like her husband isn't on her team anymore. At the same time, Clyle is keeping on as well as he can by avoiding Alma, but he also oscillates between feelings of love for her and guilt at all the mistakes he's done.
Even though they don't have their own children, their farmhand Hal Bullard is like a son to them. He became intellectually disabled at a young age due to his mother's neglect but Alma and Clyle are adamant he is a good person, capable of being independent and taking basic care of himself. Of course, not everyone believes that and Alma's long fight to protect Hal from accusations of murder begins.
The novel mostly focuses on interpersonal relationships and the relationship each person has with themselves. There is a lot of anger, sadness and regret in the mix and no single character is either completely likeable or completely unlikeable. While I appreciated the realism of people's inner thoughts and struggles, I felt like it became very repetitive and none of the character development past page 150 was unexpected. Despite it being written in a beautiful, imaginative way that easily pulls the reader in, my biggest gripe with the novel was that I, someone who almost never reads crime novels, felt like the story itself was not unique or extraordinary in any way.
Other than the writing style, I enjoyed the fact that events unfold from the perspectives of two people - Alma and Milo, the missing girl's younger brother. Milo was my favourite character because his arc was the strongest and the story was more interesting to observe through his eyes and mind.
Deer Season comes out on September 1st. Huge thank you to NetGalley, Erin Flanagan and University of Nebraska Press for the advanced reader copy.
What happens when a small-town teenage girl disappears the same weekend an intellectually disabled man returns from a deer hunting trip with a bloody and dented truck and a story that doesn't make sense?
Deer Season is set in Gunthrum, Nebraska in 1985 and it explores small-town syndrome and the negative impact it can have on everyone involved. Alma Costagan moved from Chicago to Gunthrum with her husband Clyle 14 years ago to care for his sick mother, but after she passed away, the couple ended up not leaving the town. Throw in their inability to have a child and you get a city woman full of resentment towards the small town, its people and her husband because she is unable to make friends, she is often the butt of people's jokes and she feels like her husband isn't on her team anymore. At the same time, Clyle is keeping on as well as he can by avoiding Alma, but he also oscillates between feelings of love for her and guilt at all the mistakes he's done.
Even though they don't have their own children, their farmhand Hal Bullard is like a son to them. He became intellectually disabled at a young age due to his mother's neglect but Alma and Clyle are adamant he is a good person, capable of being independent and taking basic care of himself. Of course, not everyone believes that and Alma's long fight to protect Hal from accusations of murder begins.
The novel mostly focuses on interpersonal relationships and the relationship each person has with themselves. There is a lot of anger, sadness and regret in the mix and no single character is either completely likeable or completely unlikeable. While I appreciated the realism of people's inner thoughts and struggles, I felt like it became very repetitive and none of the character development past page 150 was unexpected. Despite it being written in a beautiful, imaginative way that easily pulls the reader in, my biggest gripe with the novel was that I, someone who almost never reads crime novels, felt like the story itself was not unique or extraordinary in any way.
Other than the writing style, I enjoyed the fact that events unfold from the perspectives of two people - Alma and Milo, the missing girl's younger brother. Milo was my favourite character because his arc was the strongest and the story was more interesting to observe through his eyes and mind.
Deer Season comes out on September 1st. Huge thank you to NetGalley, Erin Flanagan and University of Nebraska Press for the advanced reader copy.
October 25, 2021
Erin Flanagan’s debut novel Deer Season is a fictional mash-up, part murder mystery, part deeply observed portrait of the economic and social state of small town rural America. Gunthrum, Nebraska, where the novel is set, is a place where people work hard. The book opens with a grueling task as Alma and Clyle Costagan inject pigs on their farm. Routine is the order of the day in Gunthrum, Milo Ahern dreads the Sunday roast that follows church every week and tracks the nighttime escapes of his restless sister Peggy.
Lives are intertwined in unexpected ways. Alma, a school bus driver, is filling in for their hired hand Hal Bullard. She has become a surrogate mother for Hal, who is developmentally challenged. Hal goes deer hunting with some of the town bullies and returns with blood in his truck and a dent in the headlight. The same weekend Milo’s sister Peggy Ahern goes missing.
Alma and Clyle wonder what Hal might be capable of, townspeople spread rumors that Hal's violent past may have led him to murder. There is a rush to judgement as the town turns its fear and anger towards Hal.
Stories of missing girls abound. It is what the writer does to help you feel the impact of the character’s absence that matters most. Erin Flanagan shows the social and emotional reverberations of the disappearance masterfully.
The story is told through multiple points of view, Alma, who struggles for acceptance and mourns her infertility and her husband’s affair, is in turn tough and tender, offering her ear to Milo as he struggles with his sister’s disappearance. Milo is both humorously childlike (fart jokes with his buddy Scott Ross) and surprisingly insightful as he watched the adults around him try to make sense of the world. Clyle does his best to look out for everyone and make sense of his own confusing feelings as he reflects on an ill-fated love affair.
Alma, who left a fulfilling job in Chicago for small town, life chafes against the provincialism of the town.
Milo shares his sister’s dream of living somewhere else:
Milo wanted to head straight for a coast, and a top liberal arts college,
where he’d learn a foreign language and try to pull off a monocle. She’d
told him he’d look like Charlie McCarthy, but her idea of fashion was neon
feather earrings, so what did she know.
Deer Season is a literary mystery that offers a deep look at small town life with humor, insight and a keen eye for the human condition.
Lives are intertwined in unexpected ways. Alma, a school bus driver, is filling in for their hired hand Hal Bullard. She has become a surrogate mother for Hal, who is developmentally challenged. Hal goes deer hunting with some of the town bullies and returns with blood in his truck and a dent in the headlight. The same weekend Milo’s sister Peggy Ahern goes missing.
Alma and Clyle wonder what Hal might be capable of, townspeople spread rumors that Hal's violent past may have led him to murder. There is a rush to judgement as the town turns its fear and anger towards Hal.
Stories of missing girls abound. It is what the writer does to help you feel the impact of the character’s absence that matters most. Erin Flanagan shows the social and emotional reverberations of the disappearance masterfully.
The story is told through multiple points of view, Alma, who struggles for acceptance and mourns her infertility and her husband’s affair, is in turn tough and tender, offering her ear to Milo as he struggles with his sister’s disappearance. Milo is both humorously childlike (fart jokes with his buddy Scott Ross) and surprisingly insightful as he watched the adults around him try to make sense of the world. Clyle does his best to look out for everyone and make sense of his own confusing feelings as he reflects on an ill-fated love affair.
Alma, who left a fulfilling job in Chicago for small town, life chafes against the provincialism of the town.
Milo shares his sister’s dream of living somewhere else:
Milo wanted to head straight for a coast, and a top liberal arts college,
where he’d learn a foreign language and try to pull off a monocle. She’d
told him he’d look like Charlie McCarthy, but her idea of fashion was neon
feather earrings, so what did she know.
Deer Season is a literary mystery that offers a deep look at small town life with humor, insight and a keen eye for the human condition.
July 15, 2021
My goodness, this book. I simultaneously wanted to read as fast as I could and to read slowly—fast because the story was suspenseful and I needed to know what happened; slowly because I wanted to savor the details and the brilliantly articulated observations. I read it in one sitting, and it was a truly enjoyable reading experience.
Erin writes characters so well—complex and resonant in the very same way that people are. Like one of the characters in this book, her fundamental impulses are toward kindness, and that truth shines in the generosity she shows to her characters in giving them context and sympathetic attributes even when their behavior and choices are problematic.
I have lived in Nebraska all my life (well, with the exception of two elementary school years), and I’m almost sad for readers who might not get how spot on the observations are and how well done the nuances of culture are.
For my taste this book has exactly the right balance of plot and character—character-driven for sure but with characters that are bursting full and with just enough plot to make it sing. And exactly the right pace—a slow burn that is somehow exciting at the same time.
The more I think about this book, the more I love it: it gets my highest recommendation and ALL the sparkling stars 🌟 🌟🌟🌟🌟 || # mrsopusreadstheus (3 of 50)
Erin writes characters so well—complex and resonant in the very same way that people are. Like one of the characters in this book, her fundamental impulses are toward kindness, and that truth shines in the generosity she shows to her characters in giving them context and sympathetic attributes even when their behavior and choices are problematic.
I have lived in Nebraska all my life (well, with the exception of two elementary school years), and I’m almost sad for readers who might not get how spot on the observations are and how well done the nuances of culture are.
For my taste this book has exactly the right balance of plot and character—character-driven for sure but with characters that are bursting full and with just enough plot to make it sing. And exactly the right pace—a slow burn that is somehow exciting at the same time.
The more I think about this book, the more I love it: it gets my highest recommendation and ALL the sparkling stars 🌟 🌟🌟🌟🌟 || # mrsopusreadstheus (3 of 50)
March 2, 2022
If you're looking for a fast-paced, action-packed thriller, this isn't your book. But read it if you can appreciate flawed and complex characters, small town settings, complicated relationships and reflecting on universal questions like: how far will you go to protect the ones you love?
The year is 1985, the fictional town is Gunthrum, Nebraska, and the main character is Alma, a middle age, ruthless woman who comes from somewhere else and experiences the 'outsider syndrome' as much as her intellectually disabled farmhand experiences the '"different" syndrome.' The bond between the two is unavoidable and very much like mother-and son-. When a teenage girl he likes goes missing, he becomes suspect n.#1. I enjoyed very much also the girls' little brother's point of view, credible for his age. Despite being a story about hunting, there aren't any goring details. It is an Edgar Award nomination and could make a good movie.
The year is 1985, the fictional town is Gunthrum, Nebraska, and the main character is Alma, a middle age, ruthless woman who comes from somewhere else and experiences the 'outsider syndrome' as much as her intellectually disabled farmhand experiences the '"different" syndrome.' The bond between the two is unavoidable and very much like mother-and son-. When a teenage girl he likes goes missing, he becomes suspect n.#1. I enjoyed very much also the girls' little brother's point of view, credible for his age. Despite being a story about hunting, there aren't any goring details. It is an Edgar Award nomination and could make a good movie.
August 25, 2021
There are a couple of good characters in this novel--Milo, whose sister is missing, and Hal, a big handsome guy who is brain damaged. Good friends in this tiny Nebraska town turn against each other pretty quickly in a story that never quite takes off. It's a thoughtful story, but slow going. "Deer Season" is one of those books that, if you're in the right head space, will involve you. But if you're not there, it's just good, Erin Flanagan has a way with words and her career will be worth watching.
August 16, 2022
At 1st I wasn't going to finish this book, but eventually I did. Somber, sad, depressing. Small town life. Choices, decisions, regrets, married life - a lot for one book. By the end I appreciated this book for what it made me remember & dislike about people & small towns and how lonely life is when you don't fit in with the crowd. Being different makes you spend a lot of time alone with your thoughts - which can be both good & bad.
November 16, 2022
For me this was Mystic River in a farming community--suspenseful, dread-filled, sad, but also really funny in moments. Alma is going to be my favorite main character for a long long time, I can tell.
August 18, 2023
Winner of the Edgar Award for Best First Novel in 2022. This novel was on my radar because of the award and also because of its Nebraska setting.
Erin was recently a guest on the Book Cougars along with author Katrina Kittle. She said she was surprised by the nomination because it is a quiet story. In a small rural Nebraska town, a teenage girl doesn't come home. We get some of the story through her younger brother's POV. There's lots of drinking and unhappy relationships. A young man who is mentally challenged is easily set up as the fall guy but did he do it? Did anything actually happen or did the girl skip town? It's a good story and I enjoyed the audio narration.
Listen to our conversation here: https://www.bookcougars.com/blog-1/20...
The interview begins at 46:50 if you want to fast forward.
Erin was recently a guest on the Book Cougars along with author Katrina Kittle. She said she was surprised by the nomination because it is a quiet story. In a small rural Nebraska town, a teenage girl doesn't come home. We get some of the story through her younger brother's POV. There's lots of drinking and unhappy relationships. A young man who is mentally challenged is easily set up as the fall guy but did he do it? Did anything actually happen or did the girl skip town? It's a good story and I enjoyed the audio narration.
Listen to our conversation here: https://www.bookcougars.com/blog-1/20...
The interview begins at 46:50 if you want to fast forward.
April 22, 2022
I picked this book up while visiting a book store in NY, mostly because it seemed different from the thrillers I typically read.. And it sure is! While not a fast-paced, intense murder mystery, this book is such a well written story about the intricacies of small town life. The gossip, the prejudice, the sense of community, all come to a boiling point as a beloved teenage girl goes missing and the town immediately turns on their strangest resident as the culprit. There are moments that are sad, moments that are infuriating, and beautiful moments of people coming to terms with who they truly are. Part murder mystery, part coming of age, a unique story with diverse characters, and an indie movie feel. The characters are flawed and complex, and the story feels very human. It is a slower pace, but well written enough to not be boring.
December 20, 2021
Small town rural America. A young girl goes missing. All eyes turn to “retarded” Hal, a farmhand, who seems to be hiding something about the very weekend the girl disappears. As the community start to ask questions, his carers also begin to wonder – could he be capable of something like this, this boy they have taken in and nurtured? A gripping and compelling novel about guilt and innocence, responsibility and loyalty, a tense psychological drama that kept me guessing to the end. Well-paced with an expertly handled gradual reveal of the back stories, convincing and nuanced characterisation and authentic dialogue, all narrated with insight and compassion, I thoroughly enjoyed the novel and recommend it highly as a really enjoyable read.
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