This Side of Brightness
By Colum McCann
(Picador, Paperback, 9780312421977, 304pp.)
Publication Date: January 2003
Categories: Historical - General
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At the turn of the century, Nathan Walker comes to New York City to take the most dangerous job in the country. A sandhog, he burrows beneath the East River, digging the tunnel that will carry trains from Brooklyn to Manhattan. In the bowels of the riverbed, the sandhogs—black, white, Irish, Italian—dig together, the darkness erasing all differences. Above ground, though, the men keep their distance until a spectacular accident welds a bond between Walker and his fellow sandhogs that will both bless and curse three generations.
Colum McCann is the author of the highly acclaimed Songdogs and Fishing the Sloe-Black River, which received the Hennessey Award for Best First Fiction, Ireland's top literary honor. He lives in New York City.
“Luminescent. Colum McCann has taken the monumental force of the past and created from it a novel of wrenching emotional dimension, a novel resplendent with dignity.” —The Boston Globe
“Inside the gritty and perilous lives of the men who dug the tunnels under New York’s East River, Irish novelist Colum McCann finds poetry....McCann’s prose shines like the waters of the East River on a bright winter day.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer
“Disturbingly beautiful...A dazzling blend of menace and heartbreak.” —The New York Times Book Review
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