ABOUT
THE BOOK

Set in underground Manhattan, past and present, Colum McCann’s second novel is a magnificent blend of imagination and history. In the early years of the century, Nathan Walker leaves the Okefenokee swamps of his native Georgia for New York City and the most dangerous job in America. A sandhog, he burrows beneath the East River, digging the underground tunnel that will carry trains between Brooklyn and Manhattan. In the bowels of the riverbed the sandhogs – black, white, Irish, Italian – dig together; above ground, though, the men keep their distance until a spectacular accident welds a bond between Walker and his fellow sandhogs that will bless and curse the next three generations. Years later, Treefrog, a homeless man driven below by a shameful secret, endures a punishing winter deep in his subway nest. In tones ranging from bleak to dark to disturbingly funny, Treefrog recounts his strategies of survival – killing rats, scavenging for soda cans, washing in the snow, sleeping through the cold – in New York’s netherworld. Between Nathan Walker and Treefrog stretch seventy years of ill-fated loves, unintended crimes, and social taboos. In a triumph of plotting, the two stories fuse to form a tale of family, race, and redemption that is as beautifully constructed as it is masterfully told. In This Side of Brightness, Colum McCann delivers a novel as bold and fabulous as New York City itself.