Catholic school girl here. In the late 1950s, it would have happened. I graduated in the 60s. One of the girls in my class - pregnant - graduated with diploma but wasn’t allowed to participate in the graduation ceremony. The father-to-be walked across that stage to get his diploma.
Beth would have decided on either abortion or adoption. Once she ruled those out, dreams of Oxford were probably off the table, unless her parents decided to raise the child for her.
I found this book easy to read – enjoyable even - but completely unbelievable. Beth’s character didn’t fit together for me. She was bold enough to have this tempetuous and adventurous relationship, but didn’t have the chutzpah to ignore his mother, confront him on his infidelty, or pursue her own dreams? She DID tell her fiance she was pregnant and then had the wherewithal to cheat on her husband?
Otoh, Frank was just too much of a saint.
While I usually read fiction with an open mind, this had something of the quality someone making up a story would produce. A grownup version of a story your bunkmate would tell after lights out at camp…
3/5 at best!
I think the early unexpected killing of the lambs mirrors the conflicts, since the physical / emotional harm that comes to the children in the novel is basically “lambs to the slaughter.”
Clare Leslie Hall said in an interview that she wanted the setting to be its own character, and I agree with @ignatius that Hall did create a strong sense of place. She said she did a lot of research on farming, even living with a rural farming couple for a bit. She said she wanted to express (I’m paraphrasing) that the land, like human lives, is equal parts harsh and beautiful.
Clare Leslie Hall seems like a very warm person. She is definitely very generous in praise of her writing peers. I read or listened to a few interviews and she often raves about books she loves.
For example, at the 16:43 mark here, she begins to recommend other books (not hers), until her interviewer has to get her back on track. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlVtDwha3bU
Here’s another interesting interview: Beauty and Brutality: A Q&A with Clare Leslie Hall | Barnes & Noble®
@jerseysouthmomchess, thanks for the link with Hall’s explanation of the twists. I understand her reasoning up to a point: “Frank took the fall because he got the chance to live with Bobby and Gabriel didn’t…and he also feels responsible for Bobby’s death.” Agreed. However, she also says: “He doesn’t want Gabriel to go through the pain of losing Leo.” Leo, age 11, wouldn’t have been tried as an adult – he wouldn’t have been tried at all. And the circumstances (and Leo’s “clean” record of behavior) would make it clear that he wasn’t a candidate for juvie. I understand that adults in a panic can make poor decisions, but this cover-up didn’t make a lot of sense.
However, I’d say it did accomplish one thing: Frank wanted to be punished for what happened to Bobby. 1968 Dorset was not a world where men go to therapy to deal with trauma. Going to prison was Frank’s way of making amends, and in a peculiar way, it healed him.
Very true but I didn’t think about it that way when I was reading the book.
Beth already felt “lesser” when she visited Oxford and definitely when she compared herself to Louisa. She read Gabriel’s diary entry and jumped immediately to his infidelity. I can understand why she thought that but remember thinking “not so sure” when I read it. Anyway both Beth and Gabriel reacted emotionally - one the accuser, the other, the accused. Beth did reach out to Gabriel again; she went to Meadowlands to talk to him. (Was she going to tell him she was pregnant? I don’t remember.) Gabriel’s mom shut it down, reconfirming all Beth feared anyway.
Not a catholic school in the 1970s and a girl in my class became pregnant and was quite far along. And they whisked her off and told us she had a tropical disease. (I believe her parents were in the Middle East at the time.) I remember talking to her once and she was very worried about her swollen belly and had no idea she was pregnant. I know I thought she looked pregnant but I can’t remember what advice I gave her. A few years later our brand new to the school teacher asked us if that was really what they told us. We found out that she apparently had been raped (possibly date raped?) and had no idea what had happened. Anyway she was very innocent. As for the diaphram, yes that was silly, you need to be fitted. My mother gave me a month’s worth of the pill before I went off to college, which at the time I thought was very silly. I also knew someone in college who got pregnant by accident, she stayed in school and chose adoption.
I thought that Oxford visit and the subsequent “reveal” about what really happened was a bit bait-and-switch, given the description of the visit made it clear he didn’t really want her around/to take her to the party, didn’t tell anyone she was his girlfriend etc. in other words I thought Beth’s assumptions were totally logical, even without the diary. Then to find out “oh he wasn’t really thinking like that” seemed off to me.
One of my friends in the 1970s got pregnant and I believe she had an abortion. She was very secretive about it and I’m not sure she ever told her parents.
One or more of my sorority sisters was raped years before and wanted to have me support her as she emoted about this in finals week of freshman year. I didn’t have the bandwidth and declined (didn’t know this person well at all), so sorority wanted me to attend a kangaroo court so I could be blackballed. I saved us all the trouble by de-pledging and managed to salvage my grades and semester. That sorority was on academic probation shortly thereafter & disbanded shortly afterwards.
I agree! Gabriel may not have been sleeping with Louisa, but he definitely wasn’t comfortable having Beth in his Oxford world, and he was dodgy at the party (in terms of their relationship):
"This is Beth, he says. “She’s down for her interview. We grew up in the same village” (p. 91).
That doesn’t sound like true love to me. Maybe he was a little relieved that Beth walked out of his life, despite the fact that he claimed otherwise later.
Yes, there was definitely discomfort at Oxford. He definitely wasn’t treating Beth as the love of his life at the party. I can ID with her feeling out of her element, especially with his very casual treatment of her. I don’t think Gabe was being honest with himself or Beth at that time.
Most of us would pretty upset if we traveled a considerable distance to see a very missed sweetheart and was taken to a party and introduced casually as a “friend from the village, down for interview.” Actions speak volumes in such cases!
Gabe was pretty good at “revisionist history,” I think. He was pressured that Louisa would be “perfect” for advancing him & that they made a great couple by evil stepmom and no argument from dad. In hindsight maybe Beth was “love of his life,” but if so, why not try harder to woo her back shortly after Oxford? Maybe he “realized it” after Louisa dumped him!
Both Beth and Gabe seem to equate lust with love. To me, the two are worlds apart. They both took a painfully long time to realize this (to the extent they ever did).
The author does a written interview at https://godsborobooks.com/blogs/subscriber-exclusive-content/behind-the-scenere-broken-country-by-clare-leslie-hall?srsltid-AfmBOoqzUzOlaF-D1K-hjYdDO7asJ8Ld\_-uuPM8F-HBVfKQ3Uld_ald
Great link to the Barnes and noble interview -
This is what Clare Hall says about Frank ……..
“ Beth’s husband, Frank, is already a fan favorite character from this book. Everybody loves Frank, and I love Frank too! He’s the hero, he’s the gentle giant, he’s the steady rock in Beth’s life. Can you talk about creating his character and finding his voice?
CLH: Yes, absolutely. I love Frank, too. I will say, there were a couple of moments when the book wasn’t quite working, and I would stop writing it for a bit, and it was always Frank that made me go back. I needed to know what Frank’s ending was. I didn’t find him difficult to write. I think it really helped that when I wrote within the male voices, I wrote Frank’s voice in a different style. It was very earthy; it was a style of writing I’d never really done before. It gave me a very strong sense of who he is. He’s a man of the Earth. He’s a man of his time, as well. He’s quite repressed. He’s very loving, and he’s very loyal, and he’s very forgiving as well, not only to Beth, but also to Jimmy. He’s flawed because he keeps his grief locked inside of himself. Not just the grief of losing his son, but also his grief with losing his mother. When he’s a teenager, he doesn’t deal with it; he throws himself into work, and he doesn’t give his wife the space she needs to grieve, which is really what causes their marriage to implode. I had to make him quite nuanced because he is a hero, and everybody loves Frank, and I do too, but Frank is not perfect. Frank recognizes in himself that he’s not perfect, and he’s really driven by guilt. I loved creating Frank. I really did, because I think there’s a lot of depth to him.
From. The B&N interview, what Clare says about Beth
side note, the interviewer says she adored Beth (even I, a fan of this book, found Beth far from adorable. 
)
“ I always had her voice right from the start, and I always knew what made Beth tick right from the start. I knew she’d lost a child, and I was a little bit hesitant about exploring parental bereavement because I knew it would be devastating, but that was the story that came. She’s flawed because she’s pulled back into this love affair with Gabriel. What was really important for me to get across was the pain that she’s in, and how her marriage is in turmoil because Frank isn’t able to give her the space to grieve. She’s got nowhere to go with this awful loss she’s feeling. Through Beth, what I really wanted to explore, was the dark pool of nostalgia, because I think we tend to think of nostalgia as being this sugar centered emotion. If it comes along in a time of great turmoil or loss as Beth is experiencing, then it can be quite menacing. She’s drawn back into this great love affair that had finished for no good reason. The chemistry between Beth and Gabriel is the same, but I think she’s pulled back into wanting to be the girl that she was before loss and heartbreak. She’s feisty when she’s young, and she’s ambitious. What I love about her journey, is she has a lot thrown at her in the novel, and she doesn’t get the academic life that she craves at the beginning of the novel, but she actually finds a much richer and more rewarding life on the farm. I really liked that arc for Beth. It was important for me to give her that resolution.
Well, sorry, I didn’t see the depth and nuance that the writer was trying to convey. I really saw Beth as very shallow and Gabe too. Didn’t know what to make of Frank but he wasn’t a favorite either. He was self-sacrificing but a martyr when it wasn’t needed and made Leo never be able to explain what actually happened and get forgiven and absolved for it was not helpful to Leo AT ALL. I agree maybe it was therapeutic to Frank for him to go to jail/be punished for “allowing Bobby to die,” even though he was not the only one who allowed Bobby to be unsupervised at that critical moment—Beth could have chosen to remain with Bobby instead of going elsewhere on that critical day, no matter what Frank said or insisted.
I wondered if the laws for a juvenile murder suspect were the same in England as they are in the United States, so I did an AI search. They are not the same and it looks like the consequences for Leo could have been harsher than they would have been here.
Here is a little bit of the summary and a link to my search:
In England during the late 1960s, an 11-year-old child who killed someone would be processed through the standard adult criminal court system, subject to specific legal protections and sentencing rules governing juveniles.
1. Criminal Responsibility and Prosecution
Age Threshold: Under the Children and Young Persons Act 1963, the age of criminal responsibility in England had been raised from 8 to 10 years old. Therefore, an 11-year-old was legally old enough to face criminal charges.
The Principle of Doli Incapax: For children between ages 10 and 14, the law presumed that the child did not possess the moral capacity to understand that their act was gravely wrong (doli incapax). To secure a conviction, the prosecution was legally required to rebut this presumption by proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the child understood their action was severely wrong, rather than just mischievous.
2. Trial Procedure
Court Venue: While minor juvenile offenses were handled in special Children’s Courts, serious charges like murder had to be tried in adult courts before a judge and jury at the Assizes (later replaced by the Crown Court).
Formal Environment: Although some allowances were made regarding courtroom attire or questioning tone, the trial took place in a formal court environment, with full legal representation and evidence standards.
I actually wondered if laws were the same; thanks for your deep dive. I understand the impetus to cover for Leo. It made it a harder call for Frank, Beth, and Gabriel to step back and let the criminal system handle the crime.
Wow, thanks @Caraid. Age 11 seems shockingly young to be tried as an adult.
Clare Leslie Hall said that originally, this novel was contemporary, but as she was writing, it began to feel more and more like a period piece, so she changed course and set it in the 1960’s. That works in her favor to explain some character behavior (such as covering for Leo, Beth not pursuing her education, etc.).
[Totally an aside, but has anyone seen the limited series “Adolescence”? Devastating.]
What did we all think of Jimmy? Hall said she needed to make him both lovable and a potential menace, and that it was a difficult balance. I assume that’s why the birthing scene exists – to show us the best of Jimmy and everything he is capable of, so that we cut him slack during his drunken episodes.
I wondered if Jimmy was a little bit in love with Beth himself. His rage-fueled response to her affair seemed over-the-top.
I liked Nina. Glad she got out of that environment and found her happily-ever-after with a nice, stable accountant. 
That explanation makes sense to me, but it also signals what is, IMO, a major shortcoming of the work. IMO, all of the characters (even the dogs) seem to exist to serve plot points. All felt somewhat hollow and manufactured-for-purpose. For this to work we need a stoic, earthy farmer . . . let’s give him a loose cannon but loyal and lovable brother . . . a villain step-mother would move the story along . . . and let’s not forget be beautiful but misunderstood American friend/girlfriend . . .
I felt somewhat similar about the big reveal. It felt gimmicky. No mystery existed in the world of the book. Everyone there knew. It was an artifice created for the reader alone. We weren’t with the characters, we were just there figuring out (or not) the plot.