Home Field: A Novel

The heart of Friday Night Lights meets the emotional resonance and nostalgia of My So-Called Life in this moving debut novel about tradition, family, love, and football.

As the high school football coach in his small, rural Maryland town, Dean is a hero who reorganized the athletic program and brought the state championship to the community. When he married Nicole, the beloved town sweetheart, he seemed to have it all—until his troubled wife committed suicide. Now, everything Dean thought he knew is thrown off kilter as Nicole’s death forces him to re-evaluate all of his relationships, including those with his team and his three children.

Dean’s eleven-year old son, Robbie, is withdrawing at home and running away from school. Bry, who is only eight, is struggling to understand his mother’s untimely death and his place in the family. Eighteen-year-old Stephanie, a freshman at Swarthmore, is torn between her new identity as a rebellious and sophisticated college student, her responsibility towards her brothers, and reeling from missing her mother. As Dean struggles to continue to lead his team to victory in light of his overwhelming personal loss, he must fix his fractured family—and himself. When a new family emergency arises, Dean discovers that he’ll never view the world in the same way again.

Transporting readers to the heart of small town America, Home Field is an unforgettable, poignant story about the pull of the past and the power of forgiveness.

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As the high school football coach in his small, rural Maryland town, Dean is a hero who brought the state championship to the community. When he married Nicole, the beloved town sweetheart, he seemed to have it all—until his troubled wife committed suicide. Now, everything Dean thought he knew about his life and the people in it is thrown off-kilter as Nicole’s death forces him to reevaluate all of his relationships, including those with his team and his children.

Dean’s eleven-year old son, Robbie, is withdrawing at home and running away from school. Bry, who is only eight, is struggling to understand his mother’s untimely death and his place in the family. Eighteen-year-old Stephanie, a freshman at Swarthmore, is torn between her new identity as a rebellious and sophisticated college student, her responsibility toward her brothers, and reeling from missing her mother. As Dean struggles to continue to lead his team to victory in light of his overwhelming personal loss, he must fix his fractured family—and himself. When a new family emergency arises, Dean discovers that he’ll never view the world in the same way again. |

“In Hannah Gersen’s elegant first novel, Home Field, she delicately renders a portrait of a grieving family torn apart by suicide. With a quiet narrative hand she delves into the murky aftermath, where a widowed father falters, and his children must seek out answers with near tragic results. Gersen’s writing walks a lyrical tightrope that is both frightening and redemptive. She understands that as parents, no matter the depth of our love, we are obstructed by our own limitations, sometimes with heartbreaking consequences. In Home Field, Gersen uncovers the unflinching truths in families that wound and somehow, miraculously, save us.” - Robin Antalek, author of The Grown Ups and The Summer We Fell Apart

“[An] elegant first novel...Gersen’s writing walks a lyrical tightrope...[and] uncovers the unflinching truths in families that wound us and somehow, miraculously, save us.” - Robin Antalek, author of The Grown Ups and The Summer We Fell Apart

“This is Friday Night Lights on the mid-Atlantic but one degree deeper as Home Field breathlessly plunges the reader into tragedy. A tender, touching, unforgettable read, it reminds us just how quickly our lives can change and how family-no matter how we define it-is the net that helps us land. You won’t put this book down until everyone in Home Field has made it safely home.” - Jessica Anya Blau, author of The Trouble with Lexie

“This is Friday Night Lights on the mid-Atlantic but one degree deeper...A tender, touching, unfogettable read...You won’t put this book down until everyone in Home Field has made it safely home.” - Jessica Anya Blau, author of The Trouble with Lexie

“With elegant, precise prose and a profound understanding of family, love, and loss, Home Field accurately depicts the complicated human heart: flawed but still capable of compassion and forgiveness. This is a deeply felt novel that both moved and entertained me, and I didn’t want to stop reading it. An auspicious debut by a talented and wise writer.” - Edan Lepucki, author of New York Times bestseller California

“This is a deeply felt novel that both moved and entertained me, and I didn’t want to stop reading it. An auspicious debut by a talented and wise writer.” - Edan Lepucki, author of New York Times bestseller California

“Gersen’s characters are so full, so gently flawed, and so deeply human that it’s nearly impossible to resist falling into their world, with all its sorrow and all its subtle joy. A moving all-American family saga; fiction’s answer to Friday Night Lights.” - Kirkus Reviews