It is the summer of 1969 and ten-year-old Mal is finding it difficult to settle in to his new home, a housing estate on the outskirts of Belfast. He befriends a brash and rebellious teenager, Francy, who revels in his own status as an outsider and has set up camp in the local dump.But this is no ordinary summer – the civil rights marches are beginning, and the simmering sectarian tensions of the Larkview estate are set to erupt, hastening Mal’s painful, shocking, loss of innocence.‘a passionately engaged portrayal of a troubled boy and city’OBSERVER‘Remarkably assured … Patterson’s novel, needless to say, is neither afraid nor prejudiced, but courageously magnanimous.’GUARDIAN‘A novel of visionary power that sees through a child’s eyes a Belfast about to explode into sectarian strife.’SUNDAY TRIBUNE‘one of the great novels about Ulster at the start of its Troubles’CARLO GÉBLER‘This is a very good novel and deserves your immediate attention.’BOOKS IRELAND