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Sign up todayThe Mighty Oak
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Learn moreTim O’Connor is paid to be violent. He plays for the El Paso Storm in the West Texas Hockey League. People call him Oak. He’s been an enforcer for longer than his hip or shoulder or back have been able to hold together. He is a broken machine of gristle and rage. And he has been away from home for too long.
He’s called back to Boston by his mother’s death. There he confronts a life he failed to live, a daughter he doesn’t know, and a body that is quickly breaking down. Still, he can’t conceive of a future without hockey, even as he chews oxycodone and Adderall to numb his injuries and steady his brain. When a brutal encounter with the police places him in the path of Joan Linney, a haunted public defender, and Kip, a boy with a brave face, Oak and his chance companions roam cold streets from Castle Island to Quincy Point, struggling to believe in a different future.
In spare, potent language, Jeff W. Bens builds a remarkable character from the skates up. The Mighty Oak is a visceral and emotional experience. The fact of Oak’s physical existence is powerfully rendered, and the bone-deep transformation of his character is one you will not soon forget.
Jeff W. Bens is the author of the novel Albert, Himself. He teaches at Manhattanville College in Purchase, New York.
Adam Barr is a recovering lawyer, a twenty-five-year veteran of the golf industry, and an actor and a singer with a lifelong love of books and reading. An English major in college, he continued his education by studying with audiobook and voiceover veterans such as Johnny Heller, Steven Jay Cohen, and Tom Dheere. He currently resides with his wife and their Goldendoodle in New York City.
Reviews
“If professional football’s most eye-opening novel was Peter Gent’s 1973 classic North Dallas Forty, then it’s taken almost fifty years for hockey’s equivalent to arrive. It’s that good.”
“The best Boston sports book I’ve ever read.”
“The best book I’ve read this year. Absolutely brilliant.”
“A knock-out! Jeff Bens tackles male violence, the complexities of parenthood, and the contrary draw to both numbness and connection in wholly alive and thrilling ways.”
“The Mighty Oak introduces us to a character reminiscent of the great literary antiheroes. Written by Jeff W. Bens with an insight that balances the culturally astute and the brilliantly ambiguous with detours of unexpected humor, this is a portrait of an athlete’s multifaceted interior code: a hockey player, a brother, a father, a fighter, a lover, a friend. We lean in for a better understanding and discover a brilliant analysis of extraordinary talent and the vulnerabilities that often bleed from it.”
“Meet Tim ‘Oak’ O’Connor, a goon made of blood, sweat, and scars, ice shavings, painkillers, dashed hopes, and stadium dreams. In swift, note-perfect prose, Jeff W. Bens introduces an unforgettable antihero in one of the best novels you’ll read this decade.”
“The best writing ransoms us from the captivity of self to allow glimpses of how the world looks to others, especially those radically unlike ourselves. From the first sentences, Jeff Bens drops us vividly, viscerally into the moment-to-moment of Tim O’Connor, a man who knows how it feels to lose vast expanses of self and world—and because he feels that loss, so do we.”
“Jeff Bens is a wonderful writer. The Mighty Oak is a gripping tale of perseverance, so full of insight and energy, you won’t want it to end.”
“The Mighty Oak is a tense, spare, powerful novel. Bens has a finely calibrated voice that explodes off the page in a way that will remind readers of the very best of Raymond Carver or Richard Ford. Like Oak himself, this novel is heartfelt, headstrong, and unflinching.”
“A perfectly pitched hat trick of a book: a great sports novel, a tragedy of our opioid times, and the story of a man rediscovering what love is left in his heart. I loved every page.”
“An incisive and incandescent portrait of an American male struggling with anger, delusions, and Oxycontin. Calling to mind the work of Richard Ford and Denis Johnson, The Mighty Oak hits the reader like a hockey stick to the face.”
“Filled with memorable characters, pungent dialogue, and a lean, hard-bitten writing style, Bens’s superb novel brilliantly faces down traditional notions of manhood.”
“Oak is a marvelously drawn, complex and appealing character.”
“The Mighty Oak is first-rate fiction for adult readers. The book’s roots in reality and confidence issues should hold special appeal for many who relish contact sports, yet also understand their inherent dangers.”
“Oak’s bone-deep transformation is one you will not soon forget.”
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