Luke is charged with murder in an explosion of anger and suddenly a revered local family’s position in the community is shattered once and for all. The bond of brothers begins to weaken as Luke’s twin, Eli, and his wife Liberty hold the key to his fate. The shadow of their father begins to fade. In the small town of Sauganac, Michigan sporting prowess counts for something, enough perhaps to sideline the toxic masculinity that often guides a team’s success. But that can’t be overlooked forever and eventually the truth has to be exposed.
Difficult to categorize, THE FIELDS DEFENSE by Rebekah Johnson is an ambitious novel taking in elements of the crime thriller, the legal procedural and the melodramatics of a sprawling trans-generational family epic. For the most part, Johnson succeeds in juggling these elements to create an engaging book. There are passages that perhaps stray a touch too close to the intricacies of a long running soap opera when perhaps a flash of urgent action and drama might have helped propel the narrative. Indeed the forward motion of the story sometimes suffers from the author trying to ensure that each of her large cast of characters are allowed the same weight and agency. By trying to do so many things in the space of one novel Johnson risks missing an audience that the quality of her writing, line by line, certainly merits. She is very good at building character, at the dynamics of dialogue and of imparting the sub-textual weight of familial expectation and disappointment. She’s excellent too at the sporting metaphor. With its chapter headings named after football terms, e.g. “Quarterback Sneak”, “Wildcat Formation”, “Line of Scrimmage”, Johnson carries the theme throughout the book and she writes exceptionally well on the power of sport on both the individuals that play it and watch it. The inherent machismo of the male leads is tempered by the author’s thoughtful and reactive female characters who, though often sidelined in terms of driving the central plot, are vital to the impact of the book overall.
A carefully composed literary work that skirts the edges of genre fiction, THE FIELDS DEFENSE by Rebekah Johnson is a debut novel that establishes the author’s credentials as a serious writer with bags of potential.
~Kent Lane for IndieReader