The Mighty Oak

Critics Review

• “The best book I’ve read this year. Absolutely brilliant.”

  Jeff Pearlman, New York Times bestselling author

• “A knock-out! Jeff Bens tackles male violence, the complexities of parenthood, and the contrary draw to both numbness and connection in wholly alive and thrilling ways.”

  Lisa Muskat, producer of Joe and All the Real Girls

• “The Mighty Oak introduces us to a character reminiscent of the great literary antiheroes. Written by Jeff W. Bens with an insight that balances the culturally astute and the brilliantly ambiguous with detours of unexpected humor, this is a portrait of an athlete’s multifaceted interior code: a hockey player, a brother, a father, a fighter, a lover, a friend. We lean in for a better understanding and discover a brilliant analysis of extraordinary talent and the vulnerabilities that often bleed from it.”

  David Gordon Green, director, Halloween, Stronger, East Bound and Down, Pineapple Express

• “Meet Tim ‘Oak’ O’Connor, a goon made of blood, sweat, and scars, ice shavings, painkillers, dashed hopes, and stadium dreams. In swift, note-perfect prose, Jeff W. Bens introduces an unforgettable antihero in one of the best novels you’ll read this decade.”

  Kevin Cook, author of Tommy's Honor and The Last Headbangers

• “The best writing ransoms us from the captivity of self to allow glimpses of how the world looks to others, especially those radically unlike ourselves. From the first sentences, Jeff Bens drops us vividly, viscerally into the moment-to-moment of Tim O’Connor, a man who knows how it feels to lose vast expanses of self and world—and because he feels that loss, so do we.”

  James Sallis, author of Drive

• “Jeff Bens is a wonderful writer. The Mighty Oak is a gripping tale of perseverance, so full of insight and energy, you won’t want it to end.”

  Justin Torres, We the Animals

• “The Mighty Oak is a tense, spare, powerful novel. Bens has a finely calibrated voice that explodes off the page in a way that will remind readers of the very best of Raymond Carver or Richard Ford. Like Oak himself, this novel is heartfelt, headstrong, and unflinching.”

  Kristopher Jansma, author of Why We Came to the City

• “A perfectly pitched hat trick of a book: a great sports novel, a tragedy of our opioid times, and the story of a man rediscovering what love is left in his heart. I loved every page.”

  Scott Cheshire, author of High as the Horses' Bridles

• “An incisive and incandescent portrait of an American male struggling with anger, delusions, and Oxycontin. Calling to mind the work of Richard Ford and Denis Johnson, The Mighty Oak hits the reader like a hockey stick to the face.”

  David Burr Gerrard, author of The Epiphany Machine

• “Filled with memorable characters, pungent dialogue, and a lean, hard-bitten writing style, Bens’s superb novel brilliantly faces down traditional notions of manhood.”

  Publishers Weekly (starred review)

• “Oak is a marvelously drawn, complex and appealing character.”

  The Day (New London, CT)

• “Oak’s bone-deep transformation is one you will not soon forget.”

  Wicked Local

• “If professional football’s most eye-opening novel was Peter Gent’s 1973 classic North Dallas Forty, then it’s taken almost fifty years for hockey’s equivalent to arrive. It’s that good.”

  Greg Oliver, Society for International Hockey Research

• “The best Boston sports book I’ve ever read.”

  Bruce Pratt, WZON-Bangor, Sports Lit 101

• “The Mighty Oak is first-rate fiction for adult readers. The book’s roots in reality and confidence issues should hold special appeal for many who relish contact sports, yet also understand their inherent dangers.”

  Lone Star Literary Life