You’re going to get knocked down. Getting back up is what counts.

Meet Tom O’Brien—disciplined, motivated, the star of his 1965 high school football team, and about to be recruited by Ohio State. But when Tom gets injured and is unable to play, he finds himself at a crossroads during a turbulent time in American history. With increasing self-doubt and uncertainty, he tries to reconcile the loss of a dream with the search for a new purpose.

Tom journeys through a sharply divided country, from suburban Ohio and Kent State to Hawaii, Los Angeles, and beyond. He protests the Vietnam War, engages in intellectual debates, and experiments with different ways of life, reinventing not only his identity but also the values that shape his existence.

Robert Johns’s debut novel follows one young man’s search for meaning, delving deep into the burgeoning counterculture, political upheaval, and generational divides that mark the late '60s and early '70s. O’Brien’s Broken Play is an intensely human story of reframing the all-American dream and embracing an alternative fate.