When Reese Witherspoon first read Clare Leslie Hall’s new novel Broken Country, she couldn’t put it down.
“I read it in one sitting. I was on an airplane and I just cried so hard,” Witherspoon told PEOPLE at a March 4 event for Reese’s Book Club held in New York City in conjunction with Apple Books. “It touched this really essential human part of me that I think is very universal: this idea of your first love being lost, and then this opportunity to find that true love one more time and have one more opportunity.”
Broken Country, which is the March selection for Witherspoon’s book club, follows Beth, a woman living on a sheep farm with her husband Frank. When Beth’s brother-in-law shoots a dog that comes onto the couple’s property, Beth learns that the dog belonged to Gabriel, a man who broke her heart when she was younger.
Gabriel is now the father of a young son who reminds Beth of her own late child, and as Beth and Gabriel return to one another’s lives, old secrets resurface too. As tensions rise, Beth to must come to terms with her past and future.
Set in the 1950s and 1960s, Broken Country, which Hall said was influenced by Ian McEwan’s Atonement and L.P. Hartley’s The Go-Between, straddles multiple genres: reading like a thriller, romance and courtroom drama at once.
“As an author, you are told to stay in your lane, but I think those are the books I like to read, and those are the books that I seem to write,” Hall, also the author of the forthcoming novels Days You Were Mine (Aug. 26) and Pictures of Him (Sept. 30) told PEOPLE. “So I was just writing what was in my heart.”
The novel’s setting of Dorset, England, is also a special place for the author. She currently lives there with her family, and in addition to knowing its ins and outs — from its rolling fields to quaint pubs — Hall’s property also inspired one of the book’s pivotal scenes.
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“We live in a very old farmhouse in Dorset,” Hall said. “My husband was out running with our youngest son’s puppy, and it was lambing season. The farmer threatened to shoot him because he’d strayed into a field of lambs.”
“That did not happen, thank goodness, but this love triangle popped into my head,” the author added. “I could see them. I could see the farmer and his wife, I could see the boy and his father, and I just knew that there was something between the boy’s father and the farmer’s wife. That spark is in the opening [scene] and it’s never really changed.”
What did change throughout the writing process, however, was the perspective of Broken Country. Hall said that she originally intended for the novel to be contemporary, and to feature the voices of all three main characters, before she found her way to the story that really wanted to be told.
“I realized it was a woman’s story, and I also realized it felt period to me,” she said. “I wanted to show Beth’s struggle as a young woman trying to forge her way through prejudice, so it worked to change the timeline.”
The novel is a fitting pick for Witherspoon’s book club, which has been elevating female-focused narratives since it was first founded in 2017.
“I am always looking for an extraordinary story about a woman overcoming different odds,” Witherspoon said. “I think women have these very unique paths in life and are faced with myriad problems and issues and circumstances that aren’t determined by their own actions.”
“I’m always interested in a new way that a woman navigates towards a better future for herself, a more optimistic future for herself, or figures out a way through a very human experience and manages to find herself,” she added.
Broken Country will also be available in an audio version through Apple Books, the official home for Reese’s Book Club audiobooks. Witherspoon noted how listening to a story can be just as powerful as reading it on the page, and can even help readers connect to it in a more intimate way.
“There’s really a different kind of connection with audiences through audiobooks,” Witherspoon said. “I think there’s a feeling of being told a story, like a raconteur, that is an age-old, historical, human experience. I think people connect in different ways when they listen to audio, like you’re being told the most amazing story.”
Broken Country’s audiobook, narrated by Hattie Morahan, is itself an immersive experience, according to Hall.
“I know every single line of the book, but [Morahan] brings something new to it,” the author said of the audiobook version. And no matter what format they find it in, both Witherspoon and Hall hope Beth’s story of resilience touches readers too.
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“I have feelings about this book that I haven’t had for a few years,” Witherspoon said. “It just has a very special feeling of a singular reading experience that I think people are going to really love and enjoy.”
“I really hope that they connect with Beth’s journey because she goes through so much in the novel and has a lot thrown at her,” Hall said. “But I hope that they’ll come away being happy and satisfied with her outcome.”
Broken Country is now available from Simon & Schuster, wherever books are sold.
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