Clare Leslie Hall: Broken Country

Evocative, sensitive and compelling . . . Fires directly at the heart and hits the mark' DELIA OWENS, author of Where the Crawdads Sing

'A beautifully observed and brilliantly constructed page-turner . . . It has everything - love, loss, fury, forgiveness - and I was absolutely immersed from page one' Mary Beth Keane, author of Ask Again, Yes

Everyone in the village said nothing good would come of Gabriel's return. And as Beth looks at the man she loves on trial for murder, she can't help think they were right.

She was seventeen when she'd first met Gabriel. Over that heady, intense summer, he made her think and feel and see differently. She thought it was the start of her great love story and that it would last forever. When Gabriel left to become the person his mother expected him to be, she was broken.

It was Frank who picked up the pieces. Together they'd built a home very different from the one she'd imagined with Gabriel. And there was a time - even years - when she was happy. Watching her husband and son riding a tractor across their farm, she remembered feeling so sure that, after everything, this was the life she was supposed to be leading.

But then Gabriel came back, and all Beth's certainty about who she was and what she wanted crumbled. Even after ten years, their connection was instant. She knew it was wrong and she knew people could get hurt. But how could she resist a second chance at first love?

A love story with the pulse of a thriller, Broken Country is a heart-pounding novel of impossible choices and devastating consequences.