Broken Country

Broken Country is a novel by the British writer Clare Leslie Hall, published in March 2025.

Beth lives on a farm with her husband Frank, and the marriage works because neither of them spends much time on what came before it. A gunshot changes that. A dog chasing the sheep is killed by Frank's brother, and the animal belonged to Gabriel Wolfe, who was Beth's first love and who has returned to the village with a son of his own. Gabriel writes novels now, and his boy reminds Beth of the child she and Frank lost. As the two of them are drawn back into each other's company, old loyalties and old jealousies in the village begin to move again.

The novel alternates between the 1950s, when the main characters are teenagers, and the 1960s, when they are adults. Hall has said that the story began with a real incident in which a farmer threatened to shoot her son's puppy, and that the farmland around her home gave her the setting.