HOME OR AWAY

A 42-year-old woman who almost-but-not-quite made the Olympic hockey team decades ago moves her family back to her hometown of Liston Heights, Minnesota, to give her 9-year-old son a chance to play youth hockey at a high level.

Leigh Mackenzie is an investment banker married to her college boyfriend, Charlie. She's spent decades hiding from the memories of what happened when she unsuccessfully put everything on the line to make the Olympic ice hockey team at the Lake Placid Olympic Training Center in 2001. Now, after 20 years of marriage, she decides to uproot her family’s life in Tampa and take a new job in her old hometown so her son, Gus, can play hockey at a higher level—despite the fact that the move will put her right in the middle of the group of people she’s been avoiding since her failed the Olympic trials. Susy Walker is Leigh’s former teammate, the former best friend Leigh ghosted after Lake Placid, and she's currently assistant coach of the best youth hockey team in the area. Charlie is a stay-at-home dad with the looks of Matthew McConaughey, a partially written novel, and full devotion to his wife and child. Nine-year-old Gus is a Tampa hockey superstar who's coming to terms with the fact that when it comes to youth ice hockey, Florida-good is nothing like Minnesota-good. The book unfolds from each of these four characters’ points of view, providing an excellent, deeply layered story that explores how ambition, hope, and dedication impact the choices people make, the secrets they hold close, and the lies they tell themselves and others. It's also about powerful women supporting each other, friendship, parenthood, marriage, attraction, sexual harassment, and the all-encompassing world of high-level youth—and Olympic—sports.

An engrossing, painfully honest story about how far some people will go to chase success.