Overview

By the author of Let the Great World Spin, this critically acclaimed novel delves deep into the underbelly of New York ‘Vivid, potent, beautifully measured, and sustained by astonishingly deft description' Maggie O'Farrell ‘A dazzling blend of menace and heartbreak' New York Times Book Review ___________________________ At the turn of the twentieth century, Nathan Walker comes to New York City to take the most dangerous job in the country: digging the tunnel far beneath the Hudson that will carry trains from Brooklyn to Manhattan. In the bowels of the riverbed, the workers - black, white, Irish and Italian - dig together, the darkness erasing all differences. But above ground, the men keep their distance until a dramatic accident on a bitter winter's day welds a bond between Walker and his fellow workers that will both bless and curse three generations. Almost ninety years later, a homeless man nicknamed Treefrog stumbles on the same tunnels and sets about creating a home amongst the drug addicts, alcoholics, prostitutes and petty criminals that comprise the forgotten homeless community.

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9781037204289

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Reviews

It is, perhaps, the first authentic novel about homeless, about living below and beyond this rich city. He evokes so powerfully the stink of the present, the poignancy of the past * Frank McCourt * Vivid, potent, beautifully measured, and sustained by astonishingly deft description * Independent on Sunday * A tour de-force social history of modern New York, exploring the labyrinthine netherworld of disused subway tunnels, from their creation by Irish migrant workers to their occupation by down-and-outs * Irish Independent * Disturbingly beautiful ... A dazzling blend of menace and heartbreak * New York Times Book Review * A rarity in this cool era - the urban saga with a social conscience, employing the large canvas once used by Steinbeck and Algren * Washington Post * It is partly a story of the men who dug and blasted New York’s tunnels and of the high-steel workers who turned horizontal astonishment upon its vertical end, balancing hundreds of teetery feet above the streets to subdue the swinging girders and bolt them together into skyscrapers. Told with gripping realism and subtle detail, the facts – history researched – glow like jewels * Los Angeles Times *

Author Information

Colum McCann, born in Dublin, Ireland, is the author of five novels and two collections of stories. He has won numerous international literary awards. Zoli, Dancer and Let the Great World Spin (winner of the National Book Award) were international bestsellers and his fiction has been published in over thirty languages. He lives in New York.

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