Bridge of Clay: Knopf Books for Young Readers

Ten years in the making the epic new novel from the acclaimed, prize-winning, bestselling author of THE BOOK THIEF

From the author of THE BOOK THIEF, here is a story told backwards and inside out.

The five Dunbar brothers are living – fighting, dreaming, loving – in the perfect squalor of a house without grownups. Today, the father who abandoned them is about to walk back in.

But why has he returned, and who have the boys become since he left?

At the helm is Matthew, cynical, poetic; Rory, forever truanting; Henry, the money-spinner; and young Tommy, the pet collector who has colonized the house with dysfunctional pets, including Achilles the mule and Rosy the border collie.

And then there’s Clay, the quiet one, his whole young life haunted by an unspeakable act.

From the tale of their grandfather, whose passion for the ancient Greeks still colours their lives, to the mother and father who met over a mislaid piano, to the present day, where five sons dwell in a house with no rules, BRIDGE OF CLAY is an epic portrait of a ramshackle family and the unburying of one boy’s tragic secret.

Praise for THE BOOK THIEF by Markus Zusak
‘Brilliant and hugely ambitious’ New York Times
‘A novel of breathtaking scope’ Guardian