Us Against You

Fredrik Backman’s novel Us Against You, published in 2017, is the second book in the Beartown trilogy and returns to the small, forest-surrounded hockey town of Beartown. Picking up after the events of Beartown, the story follows the aftermath of a violent act committed by star player Kevin Erdahl against Maya Andersson, daughter of general manager Peter Andersson, and the town’s bitter split over loyalty, silence, and blame. As the hockey club teeters on the edge of collapse, a rival faction plots to relocate the team to neighboring Hed, Beartown’s longtime enemy. Into this vacuum steps a new coach, Elisabeth Zackell, a blunt, tactically brilliant woman who has no interest in nostalgia or local politics. She builds a defensive, physically punishing team around overlooked players, especially Benji Ovich, Amat, and a group of journeymen, while the “Pack”—a group of hardline former players and supporters—openly threatens anyone they deem disloyal, including Maya, her parents, and the club’s new leadership. The novel alternates between present-tense action and short, choral passages spoken by the town itself, and it repeatedly returns to the idea that a community’s identity can be both a shield and a weapon. Backman examines how loyalty to a team can curdle into complicity, how grief and shame move through families, and how a town’s need for a common enemy can override individual decency. The result is a tense, character-driven story about a junior hockey club as a microcosm of a divided community.