Tomorrow, the Beartown Ice Hockey Club's junior team is playing in the semifinal of the biggest youth tournament in the country. How important can something like that be? In most places, not so important, of course. But Beartown isn't most places.
-- Narrator (chapter 2)

Importance: This is an effective introduction for the novel because it introduces the predominant setting and characterizes it as a town with a passion for hockey. It also introduces the reader to the narrative voice, one that frequently uses questions as a rhetorical device. Here, the narrator is asking the reader how important hockey could be, and then answering that question - for Beartown, hockey is everything.

In Beartown silence always goes hand in hand with shame.
-- Kira (chapter 5)

Importance: Kira is making a comment about small town life, but it foreshadows the later events of the story. The citizens of Beartown think that Maya should have kept quiet about her rape, at...