In Beartown, the opening novel in Frederick Backman's Beartown Trilogy, fifteen-year-old Maya Andersson, is assaulted after a hockey game by the small town's hockey legend, Kevin Erdahl. At first, Maya finds the whole experience so terrifying that she doesn't want anyone to know. She realizes that if she stays quiet, Kevin hurts only her. If she speaks publicly about it, Kevin will devastate the lives of everyone who loves her.

She stays in her bedroom and tries to hide the livid bruises, claiming to have a fever so everyone will leave her alone. Her mom and dad know something's wrong. Still, they’re so worried about being "those" kind of parents—you know, the constantly hovering helicopter parents who micromanage every detail of their child's life—that they swallow their concern to give her "space."

Maya realizes almost immediately that in a village like Beartown, the sacrificial life on the altar to normalcy will be hers. Kevin carries the hopes and aspirations of a group of people convinced that very little stands between them and the meaninglessness of a small town on its last legs. They want a hero, if not to raise their fortunes, then at least to raise their dying hopes. And Maya knows that they’ll bury anything or anyone who threatens their delicate dreams.

Maya's father, Peter, a former NHL player, is the general manager of the Beartown Bears hockey club, which he’s helped to build over the past ten years into a powerhouse. Things have gone so well, in fact, that the party where the assault happened came after the national semi-final tournament—which Beartown won, moving them into the national junior hockey finals.

After a week of solitary misery, Maya decides to tell her story so that Kevin doesn't get the chance to hurt any other girls. On the day of the hockey finals, Maya breaks down and tells her parents everything that happened that night. Shattered, Maya's parents rush her to the police department to report her horrific story.

Though Maya has a pretty good idea of the implications of going public, she finds it hard not to feel like she's undergoing a second unspeakable attack. This time at the hands of people who are supposed to be, at least in theory, responsible for keeping her safe. Every freighted question they ask feels to Maya like they're trying to get her to admit everything that's happened to her is a product of her poor choices instead of a violent act of aggression against her that will plague her with nightmares for the rest of her life. Though they offer vaguely plausible gestures of sympathy and though they’d never say it out loud (or perhaps, even to themselves when they're alone), she can see in the investigators' eyes that they believe she's brought this on herself. Worse yet, the town needs the whole thing to be about her and not about the young man who attacked her.

But as the players board the bus for the championship game, things get considerably worse when the police show up and drag Kevin Erdahl off in handcuffs.

Later, people will say that though they're sorry about what's happened to Maya (to the extent that they believe anything has happened at all—and that she’s not just making it up to get attention), they're convinced that going to the police—and hauling off their hometown hero on the day of the most crucial game in Beartown for a generation was a calculated political move. That Peter was getting back at the board of the hockey club for making him fire their coach of forty years.

The whole family gets bum-rushed, transposed from the center of village life to the margins, where all the social lepers and outcasts are forced to find refuge.

They’re forced to stand on the outside looking in while occupying the center of the town's gaping chasm of self-loathing. Lifelong friends avoid them. People they’ve known their whole lives refuse to meet their gaze as they walk down the street. Animated conversations stop cold as soon as they walk into a room.

Eventually, Maya understands that to most of the people in the struggling village of Beartown, the real crime wasn’t that a defenseless fifteen-year-old had been attacked. The true offense was that she didn't care enough about everybody else's comfort to shut up about it.

Of course, everyone claims to be outraged by the horrifying nature of the whole affair; only what they find alarming is Maya's selfishness in ruining the life of a young man with so much promise.

The real transgression is the attack on their dreams, not the attack on her person.

Everyone was angry … but for the wrong reasons.

We see it all the time in our own politics. People get angry not so much about a political scandal but that someone leaked it to the press.

“Well, yeah! January 6th wasn’t something we want to encourage, but if you prosecute the people responsible, it’s just going to divide the country. I’m sorry. What’s that? You think doing something to cause more division is preferable to looking the other way? Even though ignoring it will just give permission to future dopes and conspiracy nuts? See, you’re the problem!”

When Jesus’ listeners first hear this parable, they know who’s the hero and who’s the villain without even stopping to think about it. Contrary to the unfortunate habit of Christianity in viewing Pharisees as mustache-twirling bad guys—in first-century Judea, the Pharisees were largely considered people who took their religious commitments seriously. In the long story of the development and survival of Judaism, the Pharisees are the good guys.

Why?

Because after the temple was destroyed in 70 CE, it was the Pharisees who persuaded the scattered Jews that it was Torah that was indispensable to their faith—not the temple. They could live without a temple; they’d proven that over long periods when they existed without a temple.

So, even though they’d gone extended periods without a temple and still been God’s children, they’d never gone without the Law. And unlike the temple, the Law was portable. They could take the Torah with them when they were forced to scatter to different parts of the world to escape persecution.