At 13, Tom Mullen has been bandied from one brutal foster home to the next ever since he was left as a baby in Lewis’s department store in downtown Liverpool. The discovery of a mass grave in the local school and churchyard in 1974 seems an unlikely key to Tom’s past but he finds himself inexplicably drawn to the grave site and, more chillingly, the grave appears to have been waiting to pull Tom into its terrible darkness. The grave mysteriously thrusts him into the past and Tom finds himself in the midst of the devastating Irish potato famines of the 1840s. But the grave also leads him to the Monaghan family and, for the first time in his life, Tom discovers just what having a family really means.

In The Grave, James Heneghan, whose previous novels include Torn Away, winner of the Arthur Ellis Award, and Wish Me Luck, winner of the Sheila A. Egoff Prize, has used the real-life discovery of a mass grave in Liverpool to create a compelling mystery and time-travel adventure. Heneghan’s sensitive portrayal of the Irish famine victims is vivid, as are the authentic details of mid-1970s Liverpool life, including the popular music Tom would have listened to. As well, the mass grave itself is a marvellous time-travel device that neatly bridges past and present, adding just the right dash of the supernatural to a novel that in so many other ways is rooted in realism. A gripping mystery, a compelling time-travel adventure, and a devastatingly realistic glimpse into the past, The Grave is terrifically satisfying.