A devastating airplane crash. A sense of deep personal loss. Survivor's guilt. A closely held secret that could ruin a person's career and public image. Hockey.

Those are some of the key ingredients in Heading North, the debut novel of Holly M. Wendt, an associate professor of English and Creative Writing at Lebanon Valley College.

"This has been a really long journey. It will be 11 years when it comes out next month," said Wendt. "I started writing this book just a few months after the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl air disaster."

That disaster, which sparked the idea for the book, occurred Sept. 7, 2011, when YAK-Service Flight 9633 -- carrying players and coaching staff of the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl professional ice hockey team -- crashed during take-off near Yaroslavl, Russia. Only one of the 45 people onboard survived the crash.

At the time of the crash, Lokomotiv Yaroslavl was one of the top ice hockey teams in Russia.

"When that happened, it seemed so devastating," Wendt said. "It was just so large of an event. Hockey is still a business, and you know they're going to rebuild that team ... but it seems like such an emotionally grueling process to take care of business while grieving."

Who's Holly Wendt?

A native of Northumberland County, Pennsylvania, 41-year-old Wendt, now living in Annville, Pa., earned a bachelor of arts degree from Lycoming College, a master of arts from Ohio University, and a Ph.D. from Binghamton University. They applied for the LVC job in 2014, they said, and they're married to an LVC alum. "So it's very much coming home for me," Wendt said.

Wendt is the 2023 recipient of the Thomas Rhys Vickroy Distinguished Teaching Award from LVC, and Wendt's work within and beyond the classroom has been recognized with a NISOD Excellence Award. They have twice served as co-coordinator for the Equality State Book Festival, directs Lebanon Valley College's visiting writer series, and serves as vice president of the board for the Annville Free Library.

Wendt is also a recipient of the Robert and Charlotte Baron Fellowship for Creative and Performing Artists from the American Antiquarian Society and fellowships from the Jentel Foundation and Hambidge Center. A 2023 Peter Taylor Fellow at the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, their work has appeared in Passages North, Shenandoah, Barrelhouse, Memorious and elsewhere. Wendt's nonfiction has appeared in Bodies Built for Game: The Prairie Schooner Anthology of Contemporary Sports Writing, The Rumpus and Sport Literate.

A hockey fan, Wendt has a preference for the Pittsburgh Penguins. That makes things a little awkward at home, since Wendt's husband favors the Philadelphia Flyers.

"To be fair, I'm a much more passionate hockey fan than he is," Wendt said with a laugh. "We're very much into baseball. Hockey is more my thing. ... I also grew up going to a fair number of Hershey Bears games."

Growing up, Wendt was "a really voracious reader," and "I was really lucky to have teachers at my very small, very rural school district -- a place where there's still not a traffic light in the whole school district -- who encouraged my reading. They didn't keep anything back from me, and it was those folks who helped me to think of myself as a writer."

It was while attending high school that Wendt took a couple of classes at Susquehanna University and came to realize that writing and teaching about writing were career possibilities.

As a "highly emotional teenager," Wendt created "some very melodramatic poetry, but fiction has always been where my heart is." Couple that with some experience writing for Baseball Prospectus and a couple of sports blogs, and Wendt was primed to write a little sport-centric fiction. The Lokomotiv Yaroslavl disaster was the grist for Wendt's mill.

Besides, Wendt said, there appears to be "a hunger" for sports fiction, and "it seems like there was a space for a book like this."

What's the book about?

The book's protagonist is Viktor Myrnikov, who is on the brink of realizing his lifelong dream of playing for the National Hockey League when a catastrophic plane crash kills his former Russian teammates -- including his secret boyfriend, Nikolai.

According to a plot summary, the book follows Myrnikov "as he navigates cultural and sexual divides, the gamesmanship of damaged relationships, and the dark corners of professional sports. In prose that is as tender as it is tough, we witness a young man discovering inner resources he didn't know he possessed as he struggles to find solace and respect in a world that has denied him of these things."

"I'm a character-first writer," Wendt said. "Once I figured out the protagonist, (the plot) really drew me forward very swiftly, very clearly. I wanted to know what was going to happen to him. That's a big part of my process -- not knowing what is going to happen.

"I knew he was going to be a player who wasn't on the plane. What drove me was the process of discovery. What was going to happen, what would happen with his career?"

Wendt stressed that, although based on a real event, the book is a work of fiction.

"I'm not using any real people from the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl air disaster," they said. "I'm just picking up that idea."

It is also topical, Wendt said, because the NHL "doesn't have a single out player or retired player. ... There's something really telling about hockey culture, where that's the only league where that's true. Football, baseball -- why is hockey the only place where players don't feel comfortable coming out? Because, mathematically speaking, surely there has to have been."

Myrnikov wants to do right by his lost teammates, Wendt explained, but also wants to do right by himself and "wants to keep playing ... but he's afraid he'll lose his career if he's outed."

The novel also includes a second point of view: that of the general manager of Myrnikov's NHL team, the (fictional) San Francisco Pilots.

The character, Wendt explained, is the NHL's first female GM -- which is also still very much a fiction, and she has to prove herself to her peers because, if she fails in her job, it must be because she's a woman. "Because that's how these things go," Wendt said.

What are people saying about it?

Diane Zinna, author of Letting Grief Speak: Writing Portals for Life After Loss and The All-Night Sun, called the book a "breathtaking debut novel."

"The story, at first tightly wound to the heart of one man, grows in ever-widening circles to show how a community can form and hold us," Zinna said in a press release on the book. "I couldn't help but feel that 'Ted Lasso' fans will devour this story of identity, forgiveness, and unexpected joy. With prose like a cold pack held tenderly against a bloodied brow, and with a precision of language that slices like the edge of a skate, Heading North is at once an enduring love story and some of the best sports writing and grief writing of our time."

Anne Valente, author of The Desert Sky Before Us, said Wendt "draws the reader into the world of professional hockey and into Viktor's journey through the weight of silenced grief, through a sport's rigid expectations of gender and sexuality, and through, despite everything, the glimmering hope of social and league-wide change. Wendt is a monumental talent of a writer, and I couldn't wait to read this book. Sharply written and beautifully moving, this debut novel is an absolute must-read."

Emily Nemens, author of The Cactus League, called the book a "tender hockey story," which might, she said, "sound like a contradiction, but more precisely, it's a rarity -- and a gift."

Nemens said the book follows "one athlete whose life has been upended across a tragic, transformative season, but we also experience many moments of resiliency, generosity, and possibility within his web of teammates and supporters. Wendt's narrative is ambitious in its scope, moving between Russian and US hockey cultures -- not just comparing their approaches to play, but their capacity for inclusivity and care. In reading Heading North I was reminded of some of the ugly truths and history of a still too closed-minded sports culture, but was also shown the possibilities of a more capacious and kind future on and off the ice."

Book release and bike rally

The book will be released Nov. 7 by Braddock Avenue Books.

The Midtown Scholar Bookstore, at 1302 N. 3rd St., Harrisburg, Pa., will host a book launch celebration, featuring a conversation with local author Curtis Smith, from 7 to 8 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 8.

Curtis Smith has published over 100 stories and essays and has been cited by or included in The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Mystery Stories, The Best American Spiritual Writing, The Best Small Fictions and the Norton anthology New Microfictions. He has also published three full-length story collections: The Species Crown, Bad Monkey and Beasts & Men.

The event is free and open to the public.

Wendt also promoted the book's release in conjunction with the Friends for Life Bike Rally, a fundraiser for the Toronto People with AIDS foundation, Trellis HIV and Community Care, and AACM, each of which provide necessary medication, transportation, food, and housing assistance to people living with or otherwise affected by HIV/AIDS. A portion of the proceeds from pre-orders for Heading North will be donated to Friends for Life, according to press materials for the book.

The rally is a 375-mile, six-day trek from Toronto to Montreal, Canada. It took place this year from Aug. 6 to 11.

"I had wanted to do the bike rally for some time," Wendt said. "I finally learned how to ride a bike, during the pandemic ... and then writing a novel with a gay protagonist. The timing worked out. If I could use the book to generate more funds for a cause that is really important to me, why not do it?"

The rally this year raised $1.8 million for the cause, Wendt said, raising the event's fundraising total to about $25 million over 25 years, "which is pretty amazing. I was pleased to be a small part of that."

Wendt is already working on another project, one that shifts gears completely from the genre of Heading North.

"It's a retelling of Shakespeare's 'Twelfth Night,'" Wendt -- who, besides a fondness for sports, also teaches Shakespeare -- explained.

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