Deer Season

Written by Erin Flanagan

Narrated by Sarah Welborn

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.



Contains mature themes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
• Release date: May 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9798765024447

Erin Flanagan

Erin Flanagan is the Edgar Award–nominated author of Deer Season and two short story collections, The Usual Mistakes and It’s Not Going to Kill You and Other Stories. She’s held fellowships to Yaddo, MacDowell, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Ucross, and the Vermont Studio Center. An English professor at Wright State University, Erin lives in Dayton, Ohio, with her husband, daughter, two cats, two dogs, and her friendly, caustic thoughts. For more information, visit www.erinflanagan.net.

Reviews for Deer Season

[muddyboy · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A terrifically realistic portrayal of small town America when a young lady goes missing. There is a whole lot of blame with much of it centerring on a young man everyone sees as "simple".. When his pickup truck is found with blood on it this further points to his guilt. He is living with a family (as he was abandoned by his own mother) and his surrogate mother is his stalwart defender. The tremendous strength of this novel is the great realism and detail brought to all of her characters.

[richardderus · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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.

[susan0316 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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.