THE THIRD PERIOD

Ice hockey is the sport of the spent and concealed body — pain played through, injury hidden behind the code of toughness, the damage that doesn't show until it's too late. In these eleven stories, women at the edges of the rink — a team doctor, an equipment manager, a junior-league welfare officer, a scorer — find the one thing the culture of toughness was built to keep quiet, and decide it should not stay quiet.

They resolve it not by force but by refusing to look away, insisting an institution answer for the bodies it uses up. Suspense in the Sidney Sheldon tradition, where the toughest game hides its wrongs inside the bodies that are taught never to complain.