This Side of Brightness

by Colum Mc Cann (Author)

• New

  Paperback
  2010

  $10.88

  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, 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.

• Used

  Paperback
  1998

  $3.25

  On a bitter winter's day in 1916, deep below the streets of New York, a group of men is working in one of the huge pressurized tunnels that will make up the subway system. Suddenly, a tiny hole appears in the roof of the tunnel and the air rushes in, sucking the men up through the bed of the Hudson, to be suspended on a spume of water high above the river. Almost 90 years later, Treefrog, a homeless man, stumbles through the same corridor, under the twirling flakes of snow, to his makeshift home under the city. A love story in three generations, this is also about hope and despair and survival.

• Used

  Hardcover
  1998

  $3.25

  A breakthrough novel for one of the most gifted of the current generation of Irish writers. Ostensibly a love story in three generations, THIS SIDE OF BRIGHTNESS is about many other things: about the building - and decline - of America; about the races who live there; about love, hope and despair; but most of all about the survival of the human spirit.