A storm that rolls through Beartown and Hed and the death of a local barkeep bring old faces, and old grudges, back to town.  The destruction of Hed’s ice rink seems to be the final piece of the puzzle to help the backers of Beartown to convince the council to shut down Hed’s team, but a plan to shut down both teams and start from scratch threatens both towns.  Meanwhile, survivors of a two-year old rape and its fallout find themselves tested again when a young kid attempts to get revenge for a different crime.

Fredrick Backman returns with The Winners, the third and supposed final entry in his Beartown series.  Had I known that before starting it, I may have put it off, since I haven’t read any of the others.  But he does a good job of introducing all of the characters for new readers and telling a story that, while it builds upon what I assume occurred in the previous works, stands on its own.  Now that I have an inkling of what the novels are about (Beartown, as a title, pointed me in an entirely different direction), I will have to circle back and check them out.